Soviet Strategy and the New Military Thinking

Whatever the outcome of the current constitutional reforms, the Soviet Union remains a military superpower with global security interests. The doctrines, practices, and capabilities of its still formidable armed forces are shaping world politics just at the time that the future of the country that created them is in doubt. This is the first book to examine the Soviet defense outlook and military forces in the light of these developments. In Soviet strategy and new military thinking, a group of leading strategists and

Sovietologists, writing from within the US national security community, analyzes the unprecedented changes, as well as the troubling continuities, that characterize Soviet military thinking during the 1990s. The authors confront the range of Soviet military strengths, including intercontinental nuclear power, conventional ground forces, and naval capabilities and special operations. They address questions of weapons research and development, military planning and policy-making, and the role of civilian critics on Soviet military objectives. Other chapters explore the Soviet Army's diminished influence on Eastern Europe as well as the lessons of Afghanistan. Based on primary Soviet sources and extensive personal experiences, Soviet strategy and new military thinking is an authoritative and comprehen-

sive evaluation of Soviet military power amid kaleidoscopic political and strategic change. It will guide a wide range of readers through largely unmapped oceans. Soviet strategy will be studied by specialists in international and Soviet affairs (including journalists and both political and military leaders), as well as by businessmen and other concerned citizens whose own well-being may be shaped by the Soviet future.

Soviet strategy and new military thinking

For Nancy Hemingway, Katharine, and their mom, JW: Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war

Soviet strategy and new military thinking Edited by Derek Leebaert and Timothy Dickinson

The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584.

Cambridge University Press New York Port Chester Melbourne Sydney

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www. Cambridge. org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521404297 © Cambridge University Press 1992 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1992 A catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Soviet strategy and new military thinking / edited by Derek Leebaert and Timothy Dickinson. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0 521 40429 0 (hard). - ISBN 0 521 40769 9 (paper) I. Soviet Union - Military policy. 2. Strategy. I. Leebaert, Derek. II. Dickinson, Timothy, 1943UA770.S669 1991 355'.033547-dc20 90-19959 CIP ISBN 978-0-521-40429-7 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-40769-4 paperback Transferred to digital printing 2008

Contents

Notes on contributors Foreword Acknowledgements 1

The stakes of power DEREK LEEBAERT

Part I

Soviet nuclear strategy and new military thinking COLIN S. GRAY 3 The tightening frame: mutual security and the future of strategic arms limitation RAYMOND L. GARTHOFF

Soviet theater forces on a descending path EDWARD B. ATKESON 5 Protection from one's friends: the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact CHRISTOPHER JONES 6 Red Star of the sea: the Soviet Navy and strategic policy GAEL DONELAN TARLETON

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Below the threshold

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Part III

1

The instruments of power

2

Part II

page ix xii xv

81

100 127

Managing the mission

Counter-insurgency and the lessons of Afghanistan DAVID ISBY 8 New weapons and the attempts at technical change MIKHAIL TSYPKIN

157 187

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A generation too late: civilian analysis and Soviet military thinking BENJAMIN S. LAMBETH 10 The other side of the hill: Soviet military foresight and forecasting JACOB W. KIPP Index

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Notes on contributors

The Editors DEREK LEEBAERT is a professor of management in Georgetown University's Graduate School of Business Administration. He also works on strategic planning, and on technology issues and applications, for the US Department of Defense and for industry. While a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for Science and International Affairs in the 1970s, Professor Leebaert was a founding editor of both International Security and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. He was also a founding editor of The International Economy in 1987. He has a DPhil in economics from Oxford University and previously was a Ford Fellow at MIT. graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied with A. J. P. Taylor. He has been an editor of Harper's magazine and of the Paris Review, He has taught military strategy at the MidCareer Officer's Program in the US Department of Defense, and he serves as a management consultant in the financial and information technology services sectors.

TIMOTHY DICKINSON

The Authors COLIN GRAY is president of the National Institute for Public Policy. He served on the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament from 1982 until 1987, and has also served on advisory panels for Congress' Office of Technology Assessment, the Department of the Army, and the Department of the Air Force. He teaches National Security Studies at Georgetown University. Dr. Gray has been Assistant Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London) and Director of National Security Studies at the Hudson Institute. He has a DPhil from Oxford, and his books include The Geopolitics of Super Power, Strategy for War and Peace, and Nuclear Strategy and National Style. ix

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Notes on contributors

RAYMOND L. GARTHOFF is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, having retired from the US Foreign Service in which he last served as ambassador to Bulgaria. In the 1970s, he was the Executive Secretary and Senior Advisor on the SALT I delegation, and served as Deputy Director of the State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs. He has a PhD in political science from Yale and is the author of several landmark books, including Detente and Confrontation, Soviet Military Policy, Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age, Soviet Military Doctrine, and Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis. EDWARD B. ATKESON is a professor at the Defense Intelligence College in Washington, DC. From 1982-84, he served as the National Intelligence Officer for General Purpose Forces at the CIA, being the principal advisor and assistant to the Director on matters concerning foreign general purpose forces. Previous responsibilities include being Commanding General of the US Army Concepts Analysis Agency, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, US Army Europe, Director of the Office of Policy and Planning for the Intelligence Community Staff in Washington, and Deputy Director of the US Army War College. General Atkeson's books are Thinking Red in War Games and The Final Argument of Kings: Reflections on the Art of War. He has been a Fellow at the Center for International Affairs and is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program, both at Harvard University. He has a BS from the US Military Academy and an MBA from Syracuse University. CHRISTOPHER JONES is a professor at the Jackson School of International

Studies of the University of Washington. From 1977-81, Dr. Jones was a Fellow at Harvard University's Russian Research Center. He is author of Soviet Influence in Eastern Europe: Political Autonomy and the Warsaw Pact and co-author with Professor Teresa Rakowska Harmstone of The Warsaw Pact: The Question of Cohesion, vols. 1-4. is a policy analyst at Science Applications International Corporation. Until 1991, she served as Chief of the Strategic Analysis Office at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Washington, DC. She has analyzed Soviet strategic issues within the intelligence community for over a decade.

GAEL TARLETON

DAVID ISBY is a Washington, DC attorney and a national security analyst for

unattributable US government agencies. His books include Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army and War in a Distant Country: Afghanistan's Invasion and Resistance. He has traveled extensively with the Afghan resistance.

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MIKHAIL TSYPKIN is Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs, and Coordinator of Soviet and East European Studies, at the Naval Post Graduate School. He consults for the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the US Naval War College, and for System Planning Corporation in Washington, DC. He has a PhD in Political Science, and an MA in Soviet Studies, from Harvard University. is Senior Social Scientist at The Rand Corporation, where he has served for more than fifteen years, recently as Director, International Security and Defense Policy Program. He has an extensive background in military aeronautics as a pilot and theorist. Dr. Lambeth's latest book is Understanding Soviet Defense Policy. He has a PhD in political science from Harvard and an MA from Georgetown University.

BENJAMIN LAMBETH

JACOB w. KIPP is Senior Analyst at the Soviet Army Studies Office, US Army Combined Arms Center, at Fort Leavenworth, and a professor of history at the University of Kansas. He also serves as the assistant editor of The Journal of Soviet Military Studies, and has held a Fulbright Fellowship in Poland. Dr. Kipp edited the book Soviet Aviation and Airpower. His PhD and MA in history are from Pennsylvania State University. Foreword is a recent Chairman of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is a Deputy Chairman of the Midland Bank, Chairman of Samuel Montagu & Co. Limited, and a director of a number of other companies. He was Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign Office from 1975-82.

THE RIGHT HON. SIR MICHAEL PALLISER GCMG

Foreword

Into an Unmapped Ocean For over half a century the world has accepted at face value the description of that vast land mass stretching from Eastern Europe to the Far East as "a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." This has been in spite of the exceptional variety of ethnic, cultural and climatic diversity within that presumed monolith. A unitary view of the Soviet Union has its roots in the long development of Tsarist Russian colonial-style empire followed, after 1917, by its brutal integration and consolidation under Lenin and Stalin and the almost equally brutal extension of that empire into Europe after World War II. Despite the appalling damage the Soviet Union suffered during the war, it emerged as a looming menace and awesome power - one which soon included nuclear power. Its vast resources were coupled with clearly stated malevolence towards the West. We knew Khrushchev was wrong when he proclaimed in 1961 that the Soviet Union would "bury" the West economically. But his arrogant claim had a certain plausibility to the so-called non-aligned world, which itself included countries slowly emerging from the West's own colonial rule. It carried conviction too within the Soviet Union, where claims of that sort were most needed to reassure peoples still forced to accept hopelessly a minimal standard of living. Thirty years ago now seems like ancient history. The emptiness of Khrushchev's boast increasingly became evident to the Soviet citizens themselves and to the world outside. But Moscow continued to govern in a style that discouraged any honest political or economic introspection. Meanwhile, the West saw commitments of Soviet resources to military programs as well as continuing Soviet efforts to destabilize those parts of the world where Western interests were at stake. Recent change in the Soviet Union has been so fundamental in scale and scope - political, military and economic - as to be difficult to comprehend. Perhaps it is even more difficult for Soviet citizens to comprehend - let alone to manage - the change. Political freedom and economic realism are a heady mix for a huge and turbulent country that has never known either. xii

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We go further into the 1990s with a singular and disquieting uncertainty about the likely future of the world's second superpower, if indeed it is still possible so to describe it. Nor is it reassuring to observe that no one inside the Soviet Union is much clearer about it than we are. Many in the West have applauded Gorbachev's declared objectives in his own country and would like to help - without knowing precisely what that might imply. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether Gorbachev or any other Soviet leader is carrying the majority of the people with him. What are the implications for "the West" - a term that I believe still has meaning, even if developments in Eastern Europe tend to blur boundaries and widen definitions? We must address two issues - the first primarily politico-military, the second primarily politico-economic. The issues are equally important and are, in essence, two sides of a coin. They involve our mutual security and, as in this book, they need to be addressed simultaneously. We face a politico-military dilemma. It arises out of the justifiable and correct sense among our peoples that, if the cold war is over and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, we should finally be able to beat our swords into plowshares; or most of them. The dilemma is how to respond to that popular expression of good sense, while at the same time insuring militarily against the unpredictable. Clearly, the Soviet future is dangerously unpredictable. And the invasion of Kuwait reminds us of the range of terrifying unpredictabilities elsewhere. So there is a continuing need for a sustained, if modified, Western security policy and defense effort. Above all, there is the need for a continuing alliance - political, military and economic - between North America and Western Europe, and between them and Japan, which, after all is not only Asia's dominant economic force but also the militarily potent eastern neighbor of the Soviet Union and China. Whatever happens, the Soviet Union (or whatever might emerge) will remain huge in resources and in military, nuclear power. We simply cannot tell whether such power will remain quiescent, or for how long. That is why this volume's comprehensive analysis of Soviet force and doctrine in the 1990s is so important. The politico-economic unpredictabilities underlying Soviet strategy are just as evident as the military ones. Comecon has unwound along with the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact. Moreover, the countries of Eastern Europe look to the West for political models and economic support. Moscow itself faces a far more dire economic crisis and more staggering difficulties in trying to meet it, not least because of the social upheavals throughout its vast territories in the aftermath of glasnost. The Western economic model in general, and the striking advances achieved by the European Community in particular, have had a magnetic

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effect on the East. It is essential for the West to sustain its economic success. The European Community, in economic partnership with the United States and Japan, is as crucial to the peaceful development of relations with the Soviet Union as a continuing transatlantic alliance is to sustaining the West's essential defense requirements. What, then, is really "essential", both militarily and economically? It is certainly essential to pursue with vigor the various arms control negotiations made possible by changes in Soviet policies. But this must not mean the end of any effective Western defense: the North Atlantic Treaty will remain at the core of collective security. There is also a self-evident need for adapting the Treaty as well as for the European members to play a more effective part in organizing their own security. The twenty-threemember Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe may be an excellent forum for closer cooperation among all parties; and it should include Japan. But CSCE cannot be the instrument for upholding the West's appropriate defense capabilities. Judging from Soviet capabilities, if not intentions, the authors show that there is much to defend against. Siren voices call on the European Community to stop "deepening" its process of politico-economic integration so as to enable the early "broadening" of the Community by including some Eastern Europe's fledgling democracies. This concept is misguided. It both represents a false antithesis and is cruelly misleading to the Eastern countries. "Broadening" of that kind is barely conceivable in the nineties, though "broadening" to include Western countries such as Austria or Norway certainly is. The Community needs throughout this decade to strengthen its own political, economic, monetary and institutional integration, while developing a pattern of economic links with its Eastern neighbors, and an ever more liberal economic relationship with the rest of the world. This is a cornerstone of the Western strategic response to the immense Soviet changes we are witnessing. These are brave words and challenging objectives. It will be difficult and perhaps dangerous to meet them. We face justifiable demands for deep defense spending cuts together with the prospect of slower growth as well as gross uncertainty about the supply and cost of oil. As we approach the end of one of history's bloodiest centuries, the greatest challenge to Western leaders isfinallyto reach the millennium in peace and with wider world prosperity. But it would be premature and reckless not to examine our own defense strategy, let alone that of the Soviet Union - or of whatever succeeds it. We can only hope, if with limited confidence, that our leaders will be equal to the challenge. Sir Michael Palliser

Acknowledgements

Numerous friends encouraged me to keep pursuing this work despite kaleidoscopic change in Soviet life. All of the authors in this collective effort were themselves amid constant editorial revisions and updating. But we believe that we have a book which offers enduring insights about Soviet military thinking in the 1990s. Several US government officials were particularly encouraging, as well as generous in sharing their own perspectives: Bruce Weinrod and Dale Vesser from the US Department of Defense, John Hauge from the US Treasury, Ambassador Jim Woolsey and David Webster from the State Department, David Rivkin from the Department of Energy, and Colonel of Marines Murph McCloy. Academic colleagues who have patiently discussed Soviet affairs with me include Jim Billington, Michael Mandelbaum, Leon Aron, Greg Treverton, Steve Canby and Edward Luttwak, Yves Boyer, and my first professor in Soviet politics, Columbia University's Marshall Shulman as well as my former Harvard colleague Richard Pipes. I'm also grateful to Georgetown University deans John Onto and Ali Fekrat. Several leaders in international finance and technology also served as valuable critics: IBM's Denos Gazis, president of the Advisory Board David G. Bradley, Covington & Burling's Jim Snipes, CBEMA's Anne McCormick, Jeff Bellin, David Bruce, Phil Odeen, as well as both Ed Stephenson and Maurice Zilber. Timothy Dickinson - friend, advisor, and brilliant editor - emphasizes the indispensably creative roles of Alana Boyd, Colin Clark, Naum Jasny, Jack and Barbara Chatfield, Robert H. Mitchell, and of Grenville Leyshon and Elizabeth Dickinson. Robert Ellsworth, the current chairman of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the former Deputy Secretary of Defense and Ambassador to NATO, has long been a guide for many of us in politics and strategy. Derek Leebaert Summer, 1991 xv

1

The stakes of power Derek Leebaert

A classic mark of a state's greatness is that one fears it when it is strong and weak alike. The disintegration of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet economy have undercut familiar military reckonings of the cold war. But new menaces emerge. The world remains Herman Kahn's "dangerous neighborhood" despite summit declarations of a "qualitatively new relationship" between the superpowers. The US and the Soviet Union are metamorphosing at biological speed rather than at the geological rates of most such political correlations. The US is moving back into the rich, benevolent island far out to sea that it traditionally longed to be. The Soviet Union is becoming an undoubted nuclear stockpile around which people anxiously seek to discern a more or less legitimate government. It is still a formidable military power with global security interests, the more pressing because they are less easy to defend. How does Moscow imagine its strategic capacities amid the clamor about "new phases" in international cooperation? Now that the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff describes the Soviet Union as a "business competitor" rather than an enemy, what do the leading US experts on the Soviet military predict? Where are changes in direct relationships and in their fundamental resources - wealth, knowledge, authority, will - taking East/West relations? Such sweeping issues are best organized at the hands of a group of long-time scholars of Soviet strength and vulnerability, each focusing on a central area of military expertise. "There is no such thing as an expert on Russia," observed US Ambassador Charles "Chip" Bohlen, "only various degrees of ignorance." Nothing confirmed his quip more vividly than the West's icy shock of recognition at the "drizzle of empire," to borrow from Churchill, that has masked the Communist landscape since 1988. Cholerton, the Daily Telegraph's Moscow correspondent said of the 1930s purge trials, "In this country you can believe everything except the facts." The degree of articulate anger in the Soviet Union had been seen in the democracies as Turgenevian alienation, not as the spiritual quest of "Birth of Our Power." Strength in 1

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bitterness is perhaps rightly ominous to decent accommodating constitutional states. Because it is so difficult to foresee even the direction let alone the outcome of these assertions of sovereignty within an empire, it is more than ever important to examine Moscow's philosophy of force. Different experiences and approaches are called for to examine the range of strategic nuclear power, conventional capabilities, and military organization. To this end, we interrogate the operational details within the new strategic environment as we draw tentative conclusions about Soviet strategy and military thinking in the 1990s. The maxim that defense policy must be based on an opponent's capabilities rather than on its intentions is easily forgotten amid excitement about "the end of the cold war." But how is the high level of defense policy in that security-obsessed realm actually changing from argument to doctrine in this kaleidoscope? The better to highlight the new, our authors have developed the most comprehensive recent exposition of earlier Soviet operational deployments and technologies. One great contribution of Marxism is its extension of our sense of the material context of human choice and imagination. Moscow did not just roll over in bed and awake from "the nightmare of history" to try to become a geographically isolated bourgeois democracy. The last great empire of the nineteenth century has thoroughly practical - indeed pressing - reasons to enter the international division of labor. The Soviet autarchy is beset by a cumulating host of economic, political, and military pressures. Only by overcoming them can it hope to see the twenty-first century. Otherwise, this state at least may wither away ahead of schedule. We are dealing not with the bankruptcy of strategy, but with the strategy of bankruptcy. Like any other great intellectual undertaking, strategy dissolves upon inspection into a matrix of component disciplines and passions, resources, circumstances, and desires. Strategy is the shorthand for a state's organized pursuit of its interests once its leaders have concluded that they face inescapable resistance or political threat in the larger world. It also involves the peacetime combination and orchestration of nations. The strategy of one power acts upon the foreign policies of many others as all try to balance commitments and capabilities while holding a surplus of strength in reserve. We emphasize strategy, rather than doctrine only, because questions of military capability are inseparable from geography and politics - at no time more than in the years approaching. Since 1945, strategy in East and West alike has sought nuclear stability and sometimes ascendancy. Deterrence brought some degree of stability as the great powers learned that they dared only to use their might tactically, however far away the theater of conflict.

The stakes of power

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The elucidations of doctrines of deterrence which have shaped East/West conflict have always been conducted at high levels of abstraction. Commanders on both sides had very similar roles in holding back from escalation to the thermonuclear level. Strategic choices before 1945 were qualified by the "terrible ifs" of war. Thereafter, they were subject to the assumed certainty of virtual ruin. The system must be guarded against its own final logic. The powers and temptations of great nations are rarely symmetrical. Russia has cherished its power for three reasons: first, military power has supported expansion in whatever guise - conquest, Leninist revolution, or a post-Stalin contest for assets and influences; second, military power has been imperative for maintaining order within that land of subjection, so long called "the prison house of nations"; and third, military power is needed for defending the so often invaded and devastated rodina. What main influences are altering Moscow's philosophy of force in the early 1990s? Again, there are three: first, the evaporation of presence abroad, authority at home, and legitimacy everywhere; second, the break-up of the Warsaw Pact which strips the Soviet Union of its massive conventional ascendancy over Western Europe - this reinforced by the relative demographic decline of Great Russia in the union; and, third, the capabilities steadily gained by the Soviet fleet which is the one great success story in the Soviet military establishment in this generation. The strategic kaleidoscope "Cold war" was shorthand for predictably safe main frontiers and seas during conflict both indirect and afar. Such predictability is essential to deterrence. Lines of demarcation must be established in practice and theorized about in public. The fear of what would result from a major trespass led in the late 1940s to the Great Simplification: the two superpower blocs were cemented with certain stabilizing benefits. The cold war could then be defined as an epoch in which peace in the normal sense of the term was impossible while war in the normal sense of the term was improbable. A term coined for the specific victors' quarrel which followed the war, deterrence also cemented the nuclear powers' central interests while opening opportunities for maneuver on the periphery. The Great Simplification was born of at least half a lifetime of international disorder - from 1914 until 1945. Europe was clearly divided, the Soviet Union unable to extend power across the oceans. The Great Simplification was also solidified as Japan began to develop, as the rapid collapse of the Chinese Nationalists mercifully kept the US from trying to "save" Nanking, and as South Korea became a buffer. The main tear in this

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simple tapestry of stability soon became the Sino-Soviet split. But China was in no position to initiate hostilities against the Soviet Union. Soviet consolidation of Eastern Europe under the Warsaw Pact as well as Communist control of China bracketed the ideological and strategic no-man's-land of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa - while Latin America eventually yielded its anomalous position as a non-belligerent in the cold war. Soviet power sank as ruined Japan and anarchic China gained. Under every regime, Russia gets the neighbor attitudes that it deserves. The nature of cold war, however, emphasized the limited utility of military confrontation at whatever level of violence. Therefore, the US and the West in general needed to ensure their prosperity. Sound economies both guaranteed resources for distant involvements and could also exert some attraction for developing states. Again, the US needed to exploit the contradictions between communism as an international creed on the one hand and Soviet national aggrandizement on the other. Meanwhile, the founding axiom of Soviet grand strategy - that of a regime created by the attempted suicide of the West in 1914 - anticipated a final crisis for the capitalist world. Mounting internal conflicts with their consequent social catastrophes would inflame and divide the West. When they came, the Soviet Union would be well positioned to exploit them: it was a centralized state resting upon heavy industry, possessed of increasing nuclear and conventional forces, and paradoxically confident in its "scientific world outlook." The Soviets have also had a Russian patience and a Hegelian sense of the spiral nature of dialectical advance. If history in its deepest direction pursues the one certain critical path, what does it matter if it passes through the barracks of right-wing dictatorships as long as it is suitably employed by the enthusiasts of Marxism-Leninism? Ideological detachment was one of the benefits of a Marxist education as both power blocs collected incongruous allies. Moscow has been better able to assume a high degree of diplomatic return upon its politico-military dispositions. The US knew that it confronted a regime that had minimal accountability. Washington was more susceptible to real time pressures, as in arms control negotiations and in Vietnam. The most significant Soviet gains, for example, coincided with the West's tortured introspections of the 1970s.1 Detente was later explained by its architects as an attempt to shore up the fading consensus for containment and to avoid ever repeating the Vietnam war's devastating unanticipated sacrifices, what in the fifties would have been called a "fringe war." "We'll see who can pound longest," said Wellington. The Soviets through the Brezhnev era believed that it would be they who could pound longest: the collapse of socialism showed by the

The stakes of power

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1990s that it was the West. "Dictatorships are like great trees," said Stanley Baldwin: "all very fine and mighty, and then they blow down - and there's nothing growing underneath." The ordinary great game of nations should not, however, be generalized into so imprecise a term as "cold war." These were years of stark ideological-military-reconstructive conflict which followed the greatest war in history. Several dates can be given for the separation of the cold war's head-to-head antagonism into a more precedented, though uniquely planetary, ballet of rivalries: 1956 when the US remained faithful to Europe's implicit division by abandoning promises to Hungary, or 1965 after which no demarcation lines were altered, with the dubious exception of Vietnam - a national conflict which might have afforded a potential frontier of ideological advance, but which the US held until Southeast Asia stabilized. Afghanistan, in turn, was not a part of the US defense perimeter. The erosion and above all the diffusion of forces which upheld the Great Simplification has led in the early 1990s to what can be called the Great Complication in world affairs. There are new and acute sources of international disorder. The two great Eurasian power systems are each coming under increasing stress: China facing the possibility of descending into warlordism should its army groups again divide between different power centers as in 1989; the Soviet Union, faced by a rabble of internal dangers as diverse as Russian chauvinism and Moslem discontent. The historic Eurasian cauldron of perpetual and perilous rivalries now touches two more foci of intense unpredictable change. Japan, territorially confined, its nationalism strongly reviving, has functionally surpassed the Soviet Union in all spheres but the military. To the West, the Soviet Union sees the likelihood of a German-centered Common Europe with its own foreign policy, and, most disconcerting, its own Ostpolitik. The once confident Soviet state which for a generation pioneered equally the artificial satellite and the Eurodollar meanwhile sinks all the faster into technological and institutional obsolescence. The growing instabilities pushing us into the Great Complication increase as the international roles of both the United States and the Soviet Union diminish. Vietnam and Afghanistan showed each superpower the limits of force against "invertebrate" states. The absence of both powers from the 1980s Iran/Iraq war underscored the hopes in both Washington and Moscow for fewer third-world imbroglios. There are more serious threats to peace in the third world today than forty years ago because there are more resources to reach out with gas, plutonium, or bacteria as some village quarrel is forced upon the whole fabric of nations. The world is moving into an age for which there is no vocabulary. The

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political euphemisms of the 1990s - the counterparts of such terms as extended deterrence, counter-value, fire-break, half-war, police action, and the like - have yet to be coined. The world remains bipolar only in thermonuclear terms. It is ever less so where it comes to conventional - or biochemical - weapons. A new distribution of power arises because industrial states recognize the limits of force in dealing with invertebrate ones, or those with few hostages to the future. There are now many militarily autonomous areas in the world. For example, the US would not forcefully inject itself between Brazil and Argentina. The further down one goes on the scale of violence, the greater the level of complexity. Enemies will also be harder to discern with more porous borders and with new more portable weapons of mass destruction. War games between immense Red and Blue teams over exhaustively mapped European terrain are anachronistic. Instead, the likelihood remains of an international dimension to convulsion in southern Africa; it is highly unlikely that this generation has seen the last Middle East war; and the demographics of Latin America grow increasingly desperate, at least while its current institutional fabrics are in place. Crises spring up out of the ground, swifter in their coming than in their departure - a sharp contrast of experience with the hopes for peace and demobilization worldwide. During the Great Simplification, the US and Soviet Union at least represented world alternatives in imagination as well as in power. The stark differences between these two models of development and governance are now also eroding. The world is arriving at a time when allegiances change at the pace of technology - that is, faster than ever before - and where strategic surprises may be imminent. It is not just the distribution of power which is changing, but its nature. Alliance commitments, for example, will age faster as the strength and vulnerabilities of the participants rise and fall ever more rapidly. So much that once was reckoned as essentially strategic - resource differentials, geographic distance, structure of rival (and allied) societies - is seen as transient and migrates into the tactical. The Soviet Union faces vital threats as the Great Complication unfolds, in contrast to the relatively simple challenges that Moscow confronted during the cold war. The country is in no position to adjust only at the present rate, let alone to catch its breath. Its imperatives to change whipsaw it between dynamic accommodation and a reaffirmation of fading unity and certainty. Yet the Soviet regime can no longer defend itself at home by appealing to dangers abroad, yet alone uphold the ideology Solzhenitsyn called "the scaffolding of lies." Nor can the Soviet authorities count on having their conventional strength leveraged by Warsaw Pact forces to a point of preponderance that shakes political concessions and economic subsidy from the West. Most of all, the Soviet Union must weigh its

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military spending - "the cost of empire" - against its hopes of becoming a power of the third industrial revolution. The US can meet its own domestic problems and pursue a minimalist international role with relative ease. It faces no major threats in its hemisphere, although like the whole humane, socially complex West, it is highly vulnerable to septic small war crises whether from direct terror or from the exigencies of sea lanes and access. By contrast, the Soviet Union is so configured that, excepting only Afghanistan, there are no possibilities of merely small wars on its borders. Conflict with Japan, China, any European country, or Iran would all represent a general security crisis to the West. As NATO and the Warsaw Pact each erode in their different ways, and for different causes, both the US and the Soviet Union will have to rework their strategic positions to compensate for losses in relative military power, geographic facility, and political primacy. So far as can be seen, the "new" Soviet military thinking has been tactical. It is primarily an acceptance, at least for the moment, of such new realities as independence in Eastern Europe: not so much a doctrinal reversal as an acceptance of the "re-correlation of forces" emerging in the mid-1980s - about when Soviet strategic writings ironically began to draw a close connection between theory and concrete international behavior.2 In the 1990s, the West needs not just to adapt to a more chastened Soviet doctrine, but to a different Soviet position in this "correlation of forces" originally, a Soviet concept referring to the dynamic and developing aspects of the international system. The dangers offered by the period from America's bitter revulsion after the fall of Saigon to the acceptance of INF by NATO were induced by the reawakening of a predatory consciousness in power at the center of the international system. One power occupied Eastern Europe, leaned against Western Europe, fomented violence on four continents, and spent treasuries to keep its impoverished people from talking and then more treasuries to find out what they were thinking. But the 1990s and beyond will be more vulnerable to a centerless lack of order - an "international anarchy." The Soviet Union must face a substantially more dangerous and complex world at the same time that the US, Europe, and Japan have to face a more markedly unstable Soviet Union. Soviet military doctrine The military jockeyings of the US and the Soviet Union make no sense without one another, but have never run parallel. Soviet force levels and increases of military spending have gone up for many reasons, but have not gone down when American spending has. Soviet expenditures have been

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wobbingly one directional: America's have been saw-edged. However, the Soviet force posture has been flexible: when the US invested in bombers, for example, Moscow made PVO-Strany a separate service. The US pattern has been the reverse. US spending varies not merely by Washington's interpretation of Soviet actions, but by its interpretation of Soviet attitude. Each service and each arm of each service receives pretty much the same proportion of spending whatever the absolute magnitude of defense appropriation. America's spending policies sieve through an institutional mesh which includes endless Congressional subcommittees, as well as the Joint Chiefs, veteran organizations, and Rand. No two great military organizations think, remember, or feel alike. History, culture, and geography must all be different. It should be even less surprising that two very different political systems developed great defense establishments of very different patterns. In the early days, a president of the US could manage the cold war with a firm and single hand. But such autonomy was only acceptable to Americans when the going was simultaneously critical and easy. The Soviet Union, in turn, has consciously maintained much more unity between military and political doctrine - a unity which has brought the Soviets rewards abroad and which never could have been obtained through military strength alone. The original US theorists of nuclear war undertook to work out the basic grim common sense of the atomic age. The crystalline principles of deterrence theory could never be coarsened down into empiric geography and politics. Nor could a workable deterrent operate in a world of real catastrophe on any formulations not radically simple in their context. This leads many Western observers to assume that Soviet planners have had to share most of the West's key military beliefs. But instead, the Soviet efforts to penetrate the necessities of war - and to emancipate the optimum principles of force, for itself, here and now - have been woven into an entire science possessing natural laws and an elaborate body of extensive theory seeking to govern all aspects of armed conflict and national mobilization. Objectives are formulated in the light of state and revolution, not just of autonomous military analysis. Even in the 1920s, such studies were designated "war work," voynii trud, to show that they were a proper part of socialist thought. This has but the palest of counterparts in the West. Ideology is no longer the heart of the Soviet system, if it ever was. And glasnost and perestroika - as understood in the West - are incompatible with what has been known of socialism. But Soviet doctrine retains far more consciously a great operationally formulated body of the directives and views of the ruling party on all aspects of preparation and state activity in wartime.

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There is not just a constitutional assumption of civil supremacy but a day-to-day invigilation appropriate to an originally intellectual police state's observation of its most powerful institutional arm. No junior civilian defense intellectuals have until very recently injected themselves into high decisions, no patronizing diplomats proffered alternative expertise. And as the armed forces undertake ever more responsibilities for the state, relations between the military and the civilian leadership interpenetrate to the point of unprecedented opacity. State Department appointees can declare that "Gorbachev has the military firmly under control. They are by no means resurgent." 3 But the Soviet military probably has never sought to overshadow civilian preeminence. The harshly anti-Caesarian tone of Russian life - militarized but not ruled by generals - has been too often emphasized in blood. Red Army marshals routinely hold the leadership of the civil department charged with military matters, a position prohibited by statute to even retired general and flag officers in the US. But the Soviet military may find themselves somewhat like the Chinese armed forces during the worst stages of the Cultural Revolution, the receivers in insolvency of their society. The Soviets still regard military doctrine as "the sum total of scientifically based views accepted by the country and its armed forces on the nature of contemporary wars that might be unleashed against the USSR, and the goals and missions of the armed forces in such a war, on the methods of waging it, and also on the demands which flow from such views, for the preparation of the country and the armed forces." Since 1987, however, they have assigned the preeminent place to the prevention of war. 4 Strategy, in turn, is intended to implement doctrine and is the instrument for war plans and the preparation of the country for war. Should war come, doctrine holds that high commands are managers of violence and resources policy. All complex doctrines have their deep ambiguities. Here, distinctions are made between military art (the theory and practice of preparing and conducting military operations) and military science (the system of knowledge about the character and laws of war) which comprises inter alia the strategic, operational, and tactical theory of military art. These distinctions may appear scholastic, but they constantly surface in the most practically oriented Soviet discussions of military decision-making. Western critics offer many explanations for the singularities of Soviet doctrine: bureaucratic inefficiency, the military's chauvinism, ignorance about the implications of new weapons, the nation's confidence in its ability to endure punishment, and the amazing stagnancy of Soviet intellectual life where it is a question of genuinely responding to the "world elsewhere." Officially, Soviet views on war and deterrence derive from constant

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theoretical refinement in the senior service academies, in the military's main political administrations, and in the operations directorate of the general staff. Views are also shaped by progress and refinements in weapon development as well as by analysis of the conduct of potential enemies. The military-technical side of Soviet doctrine then addresses the methods of waging war, of military organization, and of combat readiness. The Defense Ministry eventually integrates doctrine with deployment and procurement, although now its traditional centrality is waning, and thence to the high Party-formulated doctrines of policy, embracing assertions of comparative economic power and technological development as well as the states of unity (or disunity) in the East and West. Delving into Soviet writings on the significance of these often arcane definitions has long been a substantial part of the stock-in-trade of Western intelligence agencies, defense departments, and scholars. The academic swordplay of marshaling footnotes is particularly fierce. The different levels of authority which are ascribed to these Soviet lucubrations, and the quarrels which result, have been tellingly analogized to the debates among sixteenth-century Western observers of the Muscovite state. 5 Soviet doctrine is certainly specific about geography. For example, a strategic axis (SN) is part of a theater of military action itself encompassing a broad zone of terrain with its adjacent sea and airspace. Along such a strategic axis, operations are to be conducted by military entities large enough to be assigned strategic missions. Such a theater of war (TV), in turn, usually includes several theaters of action (TVD) and embraces up to a continent. The Soviets divide their frontiers into five principal theaters: the Northwestern, Western, and Southwestern - which extends from the Arctic to the Black Sea; the Southern, from the Black Sea to the intersection of the Soviet, Chinese, and Afghan borders; and the Eastern for the rest of the country and Mongolia, including Pacific territorial waters. To each theater, a high command: subordinate headquarters may be established to coordinate the actions within a theater and along a strategic axis, of which there may be more than one within the theater. Forces within these theaters are centrally controlled and coordinated to integrate all elements assigned to a given mission.6 A Table of Organization and Equipment emerges - believable only in a country which for over a generation has not fought a technologically comparable enemy. Any actual combat command structure is likely to be recast fast and agonizingly in the furnace of war. The Soviet high commands in both the revolution and World War II were entirely improvised

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- Trotsky racing around in trains, as well as the startled new faces which had to replace those officers slaughtered by Stalin in the 1930s, and indeed after the war had begun. The reverse arrangement entails long, formal service in well-known slots. We can gauge neither the practical implications of this difference nor tell at what point in conflict new leaders and lines of authority would be forced through the smooth face of theory - going by the French experience in 1914 and 1940, it could be within days. Nor do we know the consequences of long peace for the Soviet high command. Behind a cool analytical description of military organization and modernization there is likely to be tension and fury. Time has been unkind to so many early Soviet military anticipations: the capitalists are unlikely to turn on each other over resources; the masses of an invaded country will not rally to their liberators, and so on. Even though the Soviet Union is a state built on theory, little is known about current theoretical debates within the general staff or between the military and political leaderships. The so-called revolution in warfare of the 1980s boils down to an implosion in the time available for decision and response. The Soviet Union has always had months to prepare, even when taken by surprise as in 1941. Where will power ultimately rest to make and act upon tremendously fast decisions forced by future conflict? And how might such conflicts be conducted? The instruments of power The Soviet Union's strategic problems remain those of the Muscovite state writ large - frontiers, development, nationalities. Problems are not likely to be resolved, whether with Germany, the Ukraine, the Baltic republics, or the eastern borders. These problems, all hope, will just grimly be lived through. The Soviet Union has traditionally been forced to contain and suppress its problems. The US, on the contrary, has the offshore power's instinct to avoid pushing events to their final conclusion. The Russian/ Soviet experience is that the state eventually pays a high price for merely alleviating troubles. There comes a point when, if the opportunity arises for an apparently definitive conclusion, events will be pushed to the utmost. These cultural distinctions are apparent in the different ways the two countries think about nuclear war. For the US, doctrines of nuclear deterrence have always been an intellectual construct with origins in psychological or game theory, and formulated by civilians. The Soviets, in their turn, emphasize military science and have been prepared to wage war at all levels: they have had to endure war to the enemy's worst capacities as in 1941-45. Different systems of strategic belief lead to different

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perspectives on the consequences of central nuclear war, on stability, on the connection between intercontinental and regional strategic security systems, and on the limitation of strategic conflict.7 Geography does not permit a land-bound power such as the Soviet Union more than minimal distinctions between strategic and non-strategic nuclear forces. The Soviets understandably insist that strategic interests start at their frontiers no matter whether they are struck by an ICBM, an intermediate range missile from Europe, or a nuclear bomb from a US carrier, or perhaps fallout from some convulsion across the frontier. All Soviet force elements are therefore treated as parts of a unified strategic purpose. There are no tortured disputes as in the West over the "coupling" of strategic and theater forces. All great Russian triumphs to date have begun with the shattering of the enemy on Russian soil. Apart from the defeat of decaying states such as Turkey and Persia, the enemy was drawn into the bear-hug. World War II is canonized as the Great Patriotic War because in it the Russian people worked their own deliverance, as Stalin quite unideologically put it in the moment of victory. There was no longer any reason for the Soviets to filter their doctrine through analogy with the German War once they attained ICBM capability and all but the most suicidal enemy could be deterred at the frontiers. But equally the question arose of the enemy's ICBMs. Determining whether Moscow imparts any special doctrinal categories either to the waging or the consequences of nuclear war - and whether it thinks there is some rational working out of state interests in the event of such catastrophe - has been the subject of fierce debate in the US. For the Soviets, deterrence may be neither the only nor the last objective of strategy - a possible difference which has also inflamed convoluted discussions about the Soviet philosophy of war. "Of course we talk about 'warwinning,' " Colonel General Milstein told me in 1976 as detente continued to unravel, "What do you expect us to talk about, 'war-losing'?". The Soviets implicitly cling to the axiom of Adam Smith, "There is a lot of ruin in a country." As the levels of internal criticism roared upward a dozen years later, several Soviet commentators acknowledged that Moscow had all along entertained a notion of "victory in nuclear war." 8 Of all the Soviet defense capacities, Moscow's relative strategic nuclear standing has been least affected by the upheavals of these years. Lines of communication have been ruined for Soviet tank armies in Europe, and a failing economy forces the leadership to reassess the consequences of committing 25 percent of GNP to military budgets - mostly spent on inefficient conventional forces. Such pressures will compel Moscow to rely more rather than less on nuclear weapons just as nuclear dangers accelerate toward the periphery as new states and sub-national entities achieve such capabilities.

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Colin Gray and Raymond Garthoff show two contrasting interpretations and methods in seeking to explain Soviet thinking on nuclear war. The intellectual underpinnings of Soviet nuclear policy are interesting. But it may be more important to triangulate from the historical patterns of Russian dispositions. It is more difficult to lay out the occasions when military writings have flowered into policy. Even in vastly better documented America, we still cannot establish what the US leadership might actually do when facing nuclear war any more than we could have gauged the administration's stance on October 28, 1962 from that of October 21. Nuclear strategies are surely also a mystery to their own practitioners. "You give battle," said Bonaparte, "and then you work it out." US endeavors to standardize doctrine into procedure by way of escalation ladders and limited nuclear options recall Bismarck's observation that every treaty has written at the bottom in invisible ink "Providing things remain the way they are." No one can imagine a central nuclear war except as a convulsion of nature like a collision with an asteroid. There is a difference between strategic doctrine as an ornamental waterspout and the battle force as it strikes home. Should we assume that there is some esoteric Soviet nuclear strategy awaiting its epiphany? Or is it as likely to be as convoluted, historically conditioned, and contradictory as is nuclear doctrine in the West? Nuclear planners on both sides continue to fumble through a labyrinth of technological fluidity and moral inconceivability. It is unlikely that there is a "smoking bomb" behind the nuclear doctrine of either state. Except for very brief and very quickly abandoned junctures in the past thirty-five years, US nuclear doctrine has not sought "victory" as traditionally understood. Soviet nuclear doctrine has, however, been envisioned as a quest for victory to the extent that threats specifically nuclear have their operational place in Soviet general strategy. The Soviets have always used their nuclear potency as an instrument of political ascendancy. A strategic victory, if achieved, would be a Clausewitzian "continuation of policy." The Russians usually push hard once determined upon a foreign adventure, but will more or less yield and wait when they encounter resistance. Two steps forward, one back. Unlike Americans, they do not regard failure as an existential disaster. No ancient power on a great plain has that luxury. At the same time, the Soviet elites have always made it clear that their people are relatively expendable - much like the nineteenth-century Earl of Erne who warned the Irish nationalists that if they thought to intimidate him by shooting his bailiffs they were much mistaken. Being the survivor in that northern vastness does not come from defensive skills alone. The formulation of nuclear strategy in the American managerial idiom

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has no place in Soviet vocabulary. Russian great war thinking was chewed into shape by the teeth of the beast in the 1940s. For the Soviets, the elegant politico-military dance for strategic advantage occurs not as the nuclear bases go on special alert but rather on the leisurely, pre-industrial perspective of political conflict, indirection, and ruthless waiting, not at the nuclear planning level but on the pre-conflict political level. For the Americans, the search for doctrinal precision is far more evident in the event that deterrence fails. These comparisons also raise the question of protracted war, or at least of prolonged crisis. Moscow's likely opponents, except for China, are constitutional powers with a relatively low tolerance for strain and dislocation. Is it now any more unthinkable than in the recent past to consider which polity might best endure a six-month nuclear alert? Modern strategy has been recast by nuclear weapons. "The life of the law has not been logic," Justice Holmes taught us, "it has been experience." The possibility that a state can be destroyed in days, or in hours, has changed strategy if only because the control of two societies over several years of war is certain to be very different from controlling them over a few days of immediate destruction. Gray and Garthoff come to contrary conclusions about the key question of US-Soviet nuclear relations: do the opponents envision stalemate as a way of life or envision discontinuity and checkmate when deterrence breaks down and two states still possessing about 50,000 nuclear warheads meet head to head? Below the threshold The Soviet Union has conceded tactical power in Europe. The theater redraws itself as we watch. Soviet troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe mean that military pressure on the West would now have to start at the nuclear threshold. Escalating tensions along an intra-European frontier, with intimidating flights over Denmark and harassments over Berlin, crumbled into the archives once the Soviet Union eschewed the line "from Stettin to Trieste" that Marx had already anticipated for Tsarist Russia in 1853. The arithmetic of conventional forces has become less pressing than has the fate of an evolving cordon sanitaire. No serving US officer has ever seen combat in Europe, nor have more than a handful of Soviet officers - with the exception of having fought brave amateurs in 1956 and fired on a few crowds in 1968. Yet the Soviets rationalized maintaining forces in Eastern Europe decades after Germany's defeat by emphasizing a fictitious NATO doctrine of invasion. In fact, Moscow has long understood the advantage of facing a coalition in which NATO's fear of the great menace did not anaesthetize secondary divisions

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of interest. As Clemenceau's respect for Bonaparte diminished once he learned that all of the emperor's victories had been against coalitions, so too must the post-war Red Army marshals have had a certain confidence in "the single, brief, big strike" against NATO's national layer-cake of troops thinly arrayed along the intra-German border. 9 In the early 1980s, Moscow was confident it could just sit back and watch NATO percolate. Paul Nitze, who would soon lead the US intermediate nuclear force negotiations, and David Proektor, the head of European studies at Moscow's Institute for World Economy, each believed that the alliance would "tear itself apart" if the US insisted on deploying its intermediate range nuclear missiles in Western Europe: and both were proved wrong. 10 But Moscow was confident that its "peace offensive," replete with hooks as well as doves, could prevent US weapon deployment while further eroding NATO's public support. This strategy of playing upon foreign opinions was what Le Monde in the late 1940s correctly identified as a new style of conflict, one which could leave the rest of Europe just as vulnerable as it had been against the German blitzkrieg of 1940. The value to Moscow of nuclear weapons targeted on Europe was not to ensure strategic stability amid regional conventional victories. Instead, much as Berlin deployed the idea of the Luftwaffe in 1938, well-publicized Soviet nuclear dispositions were planned to obviate conventional conflict while achieving strategic successes. What the Soviets began calling their new doctrine in the late 1980s has been primarily tactical. Highly maneuverable and offensively-trained Soviet armored divisions depart from the "satellites." The West, in turn, needs to adapt not to a more passive Soviet conventional doctrine but to a different Soviet position of power. Trying to distinguish between "offensive" and "defensive" Soviet operational planning for Europe is difficult: so much of what appears defensive was formulated before the Warsaw Pact fell apart; and what has been called highly offensive can derive from the fact that no country wants to fight on its own soil. The profound change, however, is that the retreat from Eastern Europe dispels by acts not words and for the first time in a generation, Western fears that "the air fleets and tank armies of the Soviet Union [can] throw themselves upon us with a velocity and fury far eclipsing any Blitzkrieg of World War II." 1 1 Gross organizational inefficiencies characterize Soviet society as a whole. To impose any additional demands on the corroding infrastructure would strip more gears than anyone has been able to determine. Specifically, Soviet mobilization planning would likely jam before troops could even arrive at the depot. The Soviets can no longer hope of "winning with the last million men," as Kitchener believed the British Empire's sheer numbers and brute force would do in World War I, and as Russia actually

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did by throwing numbers of the order of a national migration into the grinders during World War II. The Red Army's problems of mobilization and of geography are now compounded by those of demography: conscripts from the Asian republics compose more than half the army drawn from rising populations long disdained by Great Russia. Even a Mongolfeatured participant in the Potemkin mutiny was promptly furnished with Slav features in the "history" books. Conscription itself is becoming problematic. Another tactical constraint is that Soviet intelligence has lost its reserve army of ideologues, misfits, and fifth columnists. In the past, the Soviet Union had stunning opportunities as its operatives recruited ideologues and fifth columnists in the West. Since it is unlikely that there are many more Philbys and Cambridge Apostles, espionage will now be less dramatic and, for the Soviets, less effective. Atkeson examines the significance of both the types and numbers of forces which Moscow is reducing. But what are the new operational concepts that must accompany these changes? What the Soviets call defensive operations, after all, still involve potent combinations of nuclear and conventional weapons, maneuver, and "a single system" composed of "massed, multi-layered fire from all types of weapons." 12 Whatever "counter-offensive" means today in the current Soviet lexicon, its implications are less threatening for Western Europe than in the past. Determining what the Voroshilov General Staff Academy believes is "offensive" or "defensive" may be little more than a state of mind. Such terminological disagreement has existed ever since Thucydides. The changes in Soviet conventional capabilities, however, may also produce leaner and substantially more formidable forces. There is nothing new in the Soviets emphasizing tactical excellence. The more credible the conventional force, the more distressingly real becomes the contingency that the NATO allies might have to play the ultimate nuclear card. Nor does a restructuring of forces mean that the Soviets are excluding the possibility of nuclear war in Europe. A terrain seared by nuclear fires would be so dreadful that merely to follow up would require conventional forces to be superbly effective. The urgency qualitatively to transform the Soviet fighting instrument was pushed in the mid-1980s by Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov. As in the rest of Soviet life, obsolescent practices had to be dropped. The Soviet military has understood preeminently the need for short-term sacrifices for longterm gain. Russia, after all, has traded numbers for efficiency with increasingly less reward for 200 years. In an idiom that now seems archaic, even so eminent an officer of the general staff as Ogarkov could speak in 1985 of exposing "the historical

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futility of the capitalist system because the correlation of forces in the international arena has changed irreversibly." 13 In a finite battleground, or, indeed, planet, qualitative changes in conventional munitions would bring these weapons closer in devastating power to their nuclear sisters, making all combat potentially "strategic." This would alter the nature of war. 14 In new and even ironic circumstances, the Soviet military establishment is urgently pursuing a high technology arsenal. The Red Army is no longer the army of the Great Patriotic War. But it still expects to throw itself on (obrushit' sya na) an opponent through a series of insistent (nastoichivyi), never ceasing (neprekrashchayushchyisya) attacks. The Soviet military can become more formidably professional. It has before it the example of a comic opera Russian navy - disastrous even in home waters which turned itself into a great world-girdling fleet in half a lifetime. Other Soviet writings stress the indivisible link between technology and the battlefield, noting "the leading role computer technology plays in the growing defense of our country" and the fact that technology provides "one of the controllable and economically beneficial paths" in dealing "with the current high cost of weapons." 15 But technology can not be confined to enhancing military efficiency. In fact, technology's permeation had long presaged the collapse of Leninist command economies.16 The vision of social comprehensiveness which was originally undertaken and defended in command terms of war and revolution is instead available in the early 1990s in terms of growth, productivity, and inventiveness. Nearly every objective set by political revolution has been transcended by technological improvement. Computer and communication technologies raise effectiveness by dispersing power as much on the battlefield as in the factory and in the rest of society, with untenable consequences for centralization and hierarchy. It is ironic to recall that in his first speech as General Secretary, Gorbachev pledged to maintain a firm grip on the "socialist camp." But he also acknowledged the prime necessity of greater economic growth. 17 Now Christopher Jones shows how Moscow allowed Eastern Europe to become independent after decades in the coils of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon. Jurists in Eastern Europe inaugurated the 1990s by debating the Pact's legality and the means which dissolved it. Soviet military doctrine had been predicated for forty years on the assumption that most of the client state armies, highly integrated into Soviet command and logistical structures, would be generally reliable in combat. The Soviet Union can not now raise sufficient divisions, no matter how their readiness is defined, to maintain the conventional posture it exploited for forty years. Free elections in Eastern Europe came with the suddenness of earlier metamorphoses. Moscow by the late 1980s understood what it had only

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glimpsed when it considered using force against Poland in 1981 - that the political, economic, and military consequences of exercising anything like the Brezhnev Doctrine had become insurmountable. In any conflict Westward, Moscow's lines of communication across its old empire through Eastern Europe would be highly vulnerable - at best. Moreover, armies returning from lost frontiers have for centuries been the carriers of disruptive ideas - even the hard-won Russian victory of 1878 shook the land for years. Alexander II paid with his life in part for Russian soldiers discovering that they were worse off than Bulgarian peasants under the hated Turk. Having stunted the societies to its immediate west during the world's greatest half-century of growth, Moscow can be reasonably certain that the West itself will not allow the logical consequences of Soviet conduct to develop in Eastern Europe. For forty years, the US could do little there other than to try to "encourage the union of western Europe to go beyond the moral limits and get themselves buttoned up in a military alliance." 18 Now a diffuse and even contentious Eastern Europe is acceptable to Moscow because the West, through aid and investment, would not let these just decommunized states become dictatorships - not that Moscow at its most hypocritical fears any of them but Germany. NATO, in turn, has become increasingly less central to US strategy. Similarly, it is unlikely that Central Front issues in fact remain central to Soviet calculations. Both superpowers have a wider 'geographic scope. Russia's eclipse as a forward land power, for example, brings seapower into more urgent focus. New Soviet naval capabilities can alter the pace and nature of future confrontation. A prolonged guerre de course at sea, with endless incidents and collisions, could itself obviate any actual clash in Europe as the West's political loyalties were unwound by ratcheting. War at sea can give conflict another dimension: as in the past, it can force the decision to escalate upon the West, recalling Cavour's maneuvering "They cannot get out without firing the cannon." Gael Tarleton studies the fleet's role in Soviet strategy. The capabilities of the Navy (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot) vastly increased during the 1970s and 80s. To what extent should the navy be regarded as "offensive" or "defensive" in the 1990s? Throughout the cold war, the great land power was vulnerable to the great sea power. The Soviet view of seapower has been entirely different from that of the US. The US Navy's emphasis upon the seas as highways was simply more spacious: Russia's historic deployment of fleets was directly upon peripheral land objectives from Navarino through Tsushima. Comparing two superpowers at sea is less a technological discussion than an anthropological one: it is one about two different systems. The last Russian naval victory was in 1853 when a Turkish fleet was destroyed at

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Sinop. In World War II, the Soviets had only one effective submarine squadron. The other six would better have been deployed as light infantry. The navy has never contributed to the Russian tradition of winning annihilating battles. And Moscow has never had the island power's view of striking with the needle rather than with the axe. The US-Soviet rivalry at sea has therefore been a vastly magnified version of Sebastopol in 1854: the liberal seapower coming right through by sea to bleed a continental empire. It has also exemplified the pressures that can be imposed by a technologically more advanced, mobile power. The only landlocked country toward which the US has a military commitment is Luxembourg. No accident: seapowers dislike getting too deep inland. American naval power has ensured Japan's independence and would later cover China's autonomy. But the 1962 Missile Crisis was the catalyst for a Soviet blue ocean navy, transcending the cruiser force of the 1950s. The strategic consequences were apparent by the 1970s: in the maintenance of a Cuban army in Angola, in the 1973 maneuvers and signals during the Middle East war, and in the general staff's assertion that "the historic function of the Soviet Armed Forces is not restricted to their function in defending our Motherland" but in opposing "the export of counterrevolution . . . in whatever distant region of our planet it may appear." 19 A relatively weak power at sea goes for disruption rather than counterfleet capabilities. Just so, America employed commerce destroyers to deadly effect in the war of 1812, not dreaming of matching the Royal Navy anywhere. Soviet naval theorists in the 1920s shaped their planning against the greatest of commercial powers, not its proud fleets. They emulated the approach of France's jeune ecole: instead of boldly confronting Britain's preeminence, France had forced the Royal Navy to disperse its resources. Outside of a few bases, the Soviet Navy is homeless beyond its coasts. It has to be self-contained. Unlike the 1970s, its hopes for warm water ports are in abeyance, and the fleet's Marine component, the "white berets," is only of divisional strength. The dislocation of alliances in Europe has much less effect on the Soviet Navy than on the army. With the demise of the Warsaw Pact, however, Moscow may concentrate more heavily on the northern flank, and thus need more protection at sea. An intention to interdict the Baltic and North Atlantic sealanes may be one explanation for the Soviet submarine penetration of Swedish waters while the rest of Europe demobilized.20 Modern Soviet naval doctrine has so far been relatively autonomous. Barely visible to traditionalists it was shaped under Admiral Gorshkov's domination rather than as a facet of high international security policy. Overall, Tarleton addresses the meaning of change in Eastern Europe for

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the fleet, as well as the implications of recently available Russian naval writings. With the Soviet fleet and air force having attained such prominence, however, can we still assume that the Red Army has the central role in Soviet strategy, or that the presence of a Soviet general as defense minister still unambiguously reflects the hierarchy of military leadership? The command education of this military leadership, as of the US and Soviet armies, has been gained against dispersed, invertebrate, third world opponents, who won. David Isby now uses the Soviet experience in Afghanistan to illuminate the role of Moscow's previously concealed special operations forces. Until perestroika, Moscow insisted that such forces were only to be found among foreign armies. Such secrecy may have been due to the unique offensive role of these outfits, offensive to the point that in the mid-1980s West Germany claimed that commandos regularly penetrated the country to familiarize themselves with strategic targets and that, in a prewar crisis, commandos would be infiltrated in Western uniforms to disrupt NATO's rear by assassinating or kidnapping political leaders. 21 The lessons of Afghanistan go wider than questions of tactics or of power projection. In the aftermath of successful conventional force reductions in Europe, special operations would be far more powerfully levered than would tanks and artillery. Since Soviet troops would no longer be deployed forward, there will also be a premium on forces which can be immediately injected - or which could defend Soviet supply lines from former allies seeking neutrality. Special operations forces are now only projecting their power inward. The elite airborne, air assault, and spetsnaz units are among the rather short list of units reliably available to the Soviet government to support local policy and anti-riot internal troop formations. The Ministry of the Interior, for example, has realized the limitations of its regular troops and has formed its own special operations army. In spring 1989, airborne units were first used to suppress massive demonstrations in Tbilisi and were later used to enforce martial law in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Army patrols were included in early 1991. This may be a sign of renewed strength and wills. Managing the mission Moscow entered the 1990s with its paradox of being a third world economy with first world weapons. Less than a decade earlier, Brezhnev's successors could each assert in the old idiom that the Soviet Union exerted its main influence on the world revolutionary process through its economic policies. In fact, military power has been Moscow's only claim to a global role trying to maintain that power has steadily compromised the economy. So much

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for the Leninist maxim that modern war cannot be waged without serious economic preparation. 22 Ironically, it was the US that first dreaded being economically buried by the military technology competition with the Soviet Union. NATO from the beginning felt that Moscow was inducing the allies to spend themselves into inflationary deficits and economic oblivion through unmanageable defense budgets. 23 As the information age approaches the millennium, the West has shown that prosperity and innovation can only come from dispersing initiative through countless decentralized, individual, random decisions. This is compatible only with an open society in contrast to the Soviet system of vertical structures, rigid production schedules, and an inability to measure opportunity. The Soviet Union is in a desperate race between economic disintegration and the creation of a political consensus which can endure the agonies of economic change as bitter as those of a bad frostbite. If the economy collapses and the entities to administer it before legitimate political structures come into place, "this military 'superpower' in possession of over 12,000 nuclear charges, [could] plunge into violent political chaos, a Lebanon-like war of all against all." 24 Wellington noted 175 years ago that "The Russians have no wealth or trade, all they have is 400,000 men about whom they talk all too much." At best, the hopelessness of Soviet economics and development will continue to constrain the potential of Russian force. The Soviet military has so far conceded that short-term sacrifices in its development are necessary for long-term benefits in capability. Mikhail Tsypkin addresses the combined military and economic questions of Soviet weapon development amid these transformations. Soviet scientists draw heavily upon historic precedent when discussing military R&D. 25 The 1930s and World War II, for example, are recalled as times of military innovation under the greatest of stress. Despite a demolished economy, the Soviet Union was able to "independently develop weapons and technologies to surpass and defeat Germany." Can the Soviets achieve new qualitative and even quantitative leaps under current constraints? Tsypkin examines an apparent contradiction: is the Soviet military R&D system being tasked with developing weapons for the twenty-first century while at the same time facing budget cuts and talk of a diminished national role? Russia for 200 years has had a sense of technical inferiority to the West and, more recently, towards Japan. Russians have never been convinced of their old intonement, nashe luchshe, "ours is best," even when it happened to be true. Underestimating Soviet military technical excellence - whether in jet engines, atomic power, rocket technology, or remote guidance - has been a chronic failing in the West's net assessments.

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The effect of new influences and institutions upon the military is evident in the unprecedented civilian challenge to traditional military responsibilities. Far more is being questioned than problems of weapons development. Gorbachev originally expanded and intellectualized the old procedures. A military monopoly was diluted while criticism arose from civilian research institutions and analysts. This was only possible among much wider social and political changes. Ben Lambeth articulates the unprecedented assertiveness of Soviet defense intellectuals who aspire to a role not dissimilar from their US counterparts. Old inhibitions and hierarchies were removed, and newly emboldened contestants have entered the arena. Tension then mounts. The civilian analysts have an independent expertise not just in arms control and procurement but also in battlefield questions such as force effectiveness. They emphasize quantitative modeling, or systems analysis, and have their own points of contact with Western civilian analysts. They have new access to their own Russian sources upon which the military previously had a proprietary grip. The result is what Lambeth calls a "civilian onslaught." Competition in military analysis also arises from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Meanwhile, the general staff has the deepest foreboding as it tries to protect its pride of place. There are constant reciprocal challenges to competence and credentials. But never before has there been an independent civilian filter between the military and the highest political leadership. New civilian critics have compared their research institutes to Rand and Hudson. These civilian defense analysts were profoundly frustrated until the mid-1980s. Theirs was largely a propaganda role exercising the most minimal influence upon the leadership. When I first encountered them in 1969 in Moscow, they spent much of their time creating psychological profiles of US national security policy-makers as well as many less prominent Americans involved in the contemporary defense debate. Twelve years later, the institutes were still on the fringes of policy as they compiled biographies of the new US appointees whom they denounced as "strategists of empire." By the early 1990s, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself joined hands with these increasingly well-prepared non-military defense experts in a contest of influence with the Defense Ministry. Edmund Wilson wrote that "One of the elements of the Russian character to which it is most difficult for the Westerner to adjust himself is the passion for self-immolation." These new civilian defense-policy critics became intertwined with the new regime and were risking their careers, at least, in challenging military competence. International security now embraces all of those influences which have a

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direct bearing on the structure of the nation state system, whose members increasingly define their security not only in the conventional modes of military strength, economic vigor, and government stability but also in terms of environment, science and technology, cultural vitality, and natural resources. Such complexity requires more than traditional general staff planning. But Soviet military forecasters are adapting their own methods to new planning techniques. Jacob Kipp expands on the military's anxious role in shaping Soviet strategy "in an era of restructuring," to "survey mankind from China to Peru." Military foresight must range over not just the scientists in weapons development but also the social scientists in the institutes and bureaucracy. Conclusion Soviet strategists have little reason for optimism as they look ahead. Strategy until a quarter century ago was conducted in a world of specific fronts: Europe, China, and the timeless path to warm water ports. From the fall of Japan until the 1970s, the Soviet Union did not face the prospect of a two front war. Now the possibility of China again throwing itself into chaos reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution is by no means unimaginable (although it was during the Cultural Revolution, we should recall, that China combined with the US). The high politics of Central Asia are again in play. And the possibility of a new, authoritarian "government of order" in the Soviet Union is regarded fearfully by everyone, particularly China. The number of unsettling forces and influences - whether economic, demographic, technological, or historic - will increase prodigiously upon the Soviet state (or its successor) irrespective of new borders or forms of government. In fact, the rise of a liberal Indian superstate, with its increasing command of the talents and technologies of the information age, might be a far greater threat to the Soviet future than would be a strengthening of merely contiguous China. Everywhere the familiar lines of demarcation are disappearing. They no longer clearly indicate those areas at the margin where the powers might probe with impunity. The moves of chess are being replaced as the analogy of world conflict by the processes of go.

If the Soviet Union wants to return to anything like its global role over the last forty years, it must rely more on strategic nuclear power. It has conceded its tactical position in Europe, and is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain its conventional forces. The diplomatic dividends of strategic nuclear power would be different depending on whom such power would be used; in Europe, against NATO, which is less likely to dissolve than to become a Hobbesian wraith; in the East, against Japan which is

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superbly conventionally well-armed; and in the Indian Ocean where a Soviet role is possible given Australia's focus on Southeast Asia and South Africa's internal problems. There is a nest of potential conflicts. Nearly every objective set for political revolution has been transcended by technological improvement. Communism set out to overthrow the separation of the country and the city, as well as of such constraints as class and religion. But this was not enough as people - whole societies - insisted on finding individual goals, defining themselves by their enmities. So Moscow place-names are changed from ideologically charged Karl Marx Prospect to the pastoral Okhotny Ryad ("Hunter's Row") and from Cheka police chief "Dzerzhinsky" square to "Lubyanka." The political economy of the information era is about human possibilities and about ever greater degrees of freedom. Technology diminishes the need for the heroic central decision-maker. The information era which was spawned by war is now transforming the Soviet Union in the 1990s. But there remains a caveat. Soviet strategists may know it best of all. History is not marked by gentleness or persuasion. Seventy years ago, the foreign minister of another doomed empire summed up the departure from the world stage that his order had taken: "It was left to us to choose the manner of our passing; and we chose the most agonizing means of death." Notes 1 Harry Gelman, The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Detente (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984). 2 V. V. Zagladin, "Correlation of Forces in the International Arena and the Development of International Relations," International Affairs, Moscow, February 1985. 3 The New York Times, May 21, 1990. 4 Soviet Military Dictionary (Moscow: Voyennoye Izdatel'stvo, 1987). 5 Edward L. Keenan, Russian Political Culture, US Department of State, Contract no. 1722-420119, 1976. 6 Soviet Military Power: Prospects for Change (US Government Printing Office, 1989). 7 Fritz W. Ermarth, "Contrasts in Soviet and American Strategic Thought," in Derek Leebaert (ed.), Soviet Military Thinking (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1981). 8 I. Kulkow, Kommunist, no. 7 (April 1989), 21; V. Zagladin, Pravda, June 13, 1988. 9 Nathan Leites, "The Soviet Style of War," in Leebaert (ed.), Soviet Military Thinking. 10 Author's discussions with D. Proektor, IMEMO, Moscow, April 1981, and with Paul Nitze, CSIA Arms Control Seminar, Harvard University, March 1981. 11 Ma j or General F. W. von Mellinthin, Panzer Battles: A S tudy of the Employment

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16 17 18 19

20 21 22

23 24 25

25

of Armor in the Second World War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956). G. Ionin, "Foundations of Modern Defensive Battle," Voyennyy Vestnik, March 1988, reported in FBIS-SOV-89-014, July 18, 1989, p. 4. The Times, April 22, 1985. N. V. Ogarkov, History Teaches Vigilance (Moscow: Voyenzadat, 1985), p. 57. Pravda, "Computers and People," February 6, 1985 and Major General M. Yasyukov, "The Military Policy of the CPSU," Kommunist Vooruzhennykh, October 20, 1985. George Paloczi-Horvath, The Facts Rebel (London: Cassell, 1963). Kommunist, no. 5 (1985), 9; FBIS-SU, May 22, 1985. R4. Daily Log Sheet, March 4, 1948, Lovett Papers, New York Historical Society, NY. See "The Fleets in the Local Wars of Imperialism," in S. G. Gorshkov, Sea Power of the State, 2nd edn (Moscow: Military Publishing House, 1979), as well as Marshal Grechko, "The Leading Role of the CPSU in Building the Army of a Developed Socialist Society," Problems of the History of the CPSU, May 1974. Gordon McCormick, Stranger than Fiction: Soviet Submarine Operations in Swedish Waters (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1990), R-3776. General Robert Close, Europe Without Defense? (New York: Pergamon Press, 1979). The current economic predicament bears out those Soviet military economists who already two decades ago insisted that there was a "national limit" to military expenditures at the national economic growth rate, and that exceeding this limit would ruin the overall economic base from which military spending is extracted. See "Analytic Notes," AN-0184, October 1984, Russian Studies Center (Bethesda, MD: Booz Allen & Hamilton, 1984). Public Record Office (UK), October 1, 1949, FO 371/71672, N 10581, and Harry S. Truman Library, PSF, Fofrestal to President, November 20, 1948. Leon Aron, "Waiting for Yeltsin," The National Interest, Summer 1990. A. Aleksandrov, interview, Izvestiya, June 10, 1985.

Parti

The instruments of power

2

Soviet nuclear strategy and new military thinking Colin S. Gray

It would be a major error to approach Soviet nuclear strategy as if it were an extant mosaic to be uncovered by the prodigious scholarly efforts of Western archaeologist-strategists. Bearing in mind the fact that the Soviet Government says next to nothing about its current thinking on its contingent nuclear operations, one should approach the subject expecting a quality of evidence more suitable for the securing, by analogy, of conviction in a civil, than in a criminal, case. There is, and is going to be, no "smoking gun," in the form of Soviet public explanation and defense of the equivalent of a NSDM-242, or a PD-59. 1 Many of the people who, understandably, debate Soviet nuclear strategy in a necessarily inexpert manner, often are less than reliably informed about the doctrine which helps shape current US (and NATO) nuclear contingency plans. These plans and related matters are the most closely guarded of state secrets - in the United States as well as in the USSR. There is a night and day difference between the quality and quantity of information officially released by the US and the Soviet governments on current (and past) nuclear doctrine and strategy. None the less, this is a subject that rightly attracts the most strenuous of official discouragement of release of classified data. Whether or not, or to what degree, the deeply classified details of nuclear targeting really matter, has to depend upon the level of questions posed. Fortunately, the more interesting issues of strategy that bear directly upon nuclear contingency planning and force structure planning do not require debate at the level of highly classified detail. The discussion immediately below identifies the diverse sources of evidence for Soviet nuclear strategy. Nine sources are registered, though these are not rigorously exclusive. Tactical capability For reasons of redundant plausible causation, it is not wholly true to claim that policy and strategy can be inferred logically from military programs. However, strategy is a practical art and the realm of tactics - of the actual 29

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use of armed force of all kinds - determines that which is possible for operational artists and strategists. Good strategy and inspired operational artistry can provide some compensation for tactical deficiencies, but it is a useful general rule that if a military operation does not work tactically then it will be a forlorn hope in strategic terms. The tactical fighting value of Soviet central nuclear forces does not dictate Soviet operational and strategic choice, but it does rule out certain objectives. Save in some exceedingly far fetched scenarios of fine-tuned C3I decapitation attacks, Soviet nuclear-armed forces simply cannot win a classic military victory.2 It is important to know if Soviet nuclear forces are capable of being employed in a highly discriminate mode against, say, hardened or otherwise elusive military targets over a period of days or even weeks. However, to pass judgment on whether or not Soviet forces would be so employed is quite a different matter. The beginning of all wisdom concerning Soviet strategy for central nuclear war is recognition that Soviet nuclear-armed forces cannot function reliably as an instrument of military decision over the United States. Their prospective tactical accomplishments would fall lamentably short of producing the necessary strategic effect for outright victory. Analogically, the great armies of 1914—early Fall 1918, were tactically incapable of delivering what operational and strategic direction asked of them. Recognition in Britain (and belatedly in the United States) in 1942^3 that Anglo-American (and Canadian) landpower and airpower simply were not sufficiently tactically effective to confront with confidence the Germans in the main theater of operations, similarly was an appreciation critical for the design and success of strategy.3 Strategic culture and national style

It is a hypothesis of increasing respectability to suggest that each national security community - Russian in this instance - has a more or less distinctive strategic culture, whence derives a discernible national style. The concepts of strategic culture and national style, as with their close cousins from the realm of geopolitical analysis, do not point to allegedly essential truths which determine thought and behavior. Instead, they indicate non-random preferences and persisting tendencies.4 The most relevant hypothesis is that the Russian/Soviet past has bequeathed to the present modes of thought, sets of attitudes, patterns of behavior, and institutions which express and propagate those learned ideas and procedures. Depending, inter alia> upon its geostrategic character - for example, is it a maritime or a continental community (or does it have an ambivalent status between the two)? - a state will tend to be better at some

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kinds of national security activity than at others. 5 As the saying goes, "it is no accident" that the Soviet/Russian army has been a more impressive fighting instrument than the navy, or that the British and US navies have been in a different league of excellence than generally have been their armies. There is some general transcultural logic to strategy at a level of arid abstraction. But, as Christopher Donnelly has emphasized, indeed possibly overemphasized, the roots of military thought and behavior are lodged in a particular stream of historical experience and in a unique geographical setting. 6 It would be a mistake to approach Soviet nuclear strategy as a local sub-set of some generic nuclear strategy. Writing of Soviet national security policy, James Sherr has offered the pithy judgment that "in any explanation of Soviet military power and its application, geopolitics may come up trumps." He is probably correct. It is scarcely less plausible to suggest that over many issues of military strategy, Soviet/Russian strategic culture and national style are likely to come up trumps. 7 Of course nuclear weapons are different, even "revolutionary," in their implications for policy, strategy, operations and tactics.8 But, that difference is treated and managed in a Soviet way. A strategic culture and national style shaped and reshaped by a millennium of deeply continentalist experience is not swept away by the advent of new weapon (and other) technologies. The functioning of culture and style is important in any national security community, but Western sensitivity to their operation in the Soviet context is unusually important because of the acute shortage of other more tangible, and reliable, sources of evidence (or just insight) on thought and contingent behavior. History Reference to a state's history as a source of evidence on future thought and behavior really means reference to that "history" as interpreted by favored historians. In Oscar Wilde's apposite words, "[a]ny fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it." 9 Soviet military professionals are second to none in the respect they accord historical study. Unlike much of their curious passion for a mathematical science of war, 10 their pedagogical utilization of historical experience - particularly of the Great Patriotic War - warrants study in the West. 11 Of outstanding interest for Western defense planners is the unsettled issue of whether Soviet defense professionals truly have a competent grasp of the likely realities of global war against the greatest mixed maritime-continental coalition in history. 12 One need hardly add that coalitions invite enemy grand strategies of divide and conquer. The nominal aggregate strength of the US-led

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coalition would likely be quite scenario-dependent. The deep, narrow and highly competent analysis of what was a one-front war against a landpower foe whose homeland fortress could be taken by the Soviet/Russian instrument of military excellence, the army, may not provide a very healthy bedrock of history-based learning for a candidate (global) World War III. Continental-minded defense expertise tends to be dismissive of the threat posed by navies, not realizing how superior seapower - broadly understood - can shape the course and structure, and hence the outcome, of (protracted) conflict. All national security communities learn from, and to a degree express, their historical experience. There are clues to current and future Soviet strategic thought and behavior in Soviet understanding o/Soviet history. It is a matter of great importance that the USSR has never waged war against a sea-based enemy whose homeland could not plausibly be reached save by engines of very long-range bombardment. Great institutions have a way of preparing to do that which they know how to do well. If the new "Red God of War," 13 the long range, nuclear-armed missiles of the Strategic Rocket Forces, are denied the license to conduct a classic (preemptive) kontrpodgotovka - a break-up barrage - wherein lies the Soviet theory of victory? Soviet strategists have to cope with a putative enemy whose strategic geography as a coalition and whose strategic preferences (which rest in part upon the very different culture, style, and historical experience of the United States) have a rather different structure from those of Moscow.14 Notwithstanding the universally acknowledged novelty of nuclear weapons, defense planners have a way of learning from history how to win against yesterday's enemy. The USSR believes that it knows how to beat a great continental power. It is less obvious that Soviet defense professionals know how to beat the extra-Eurasian United States (assuming that a SIOPRISOP "exchange" is ultra vires - a subject in need of careful treatment). Weapons and other military equipment The technical detail of Soviet weaponry does not speak eloquently to the realms of policy purpose and strategy design.15 Provided the operational context is specified - variations on the themes of first strike or first use knowledge of Soviet nuclear-armed weapon systems provides the basis for reasonable judgment as to their tactical utility against particular target sets with familiar (if often assumed) characteristics.16 But to know what a weapon system could do is not to know how it would be used. In short, Soviet operational nuclear strategy cannot be read reliably from the details of Soviet force posture - suggestive though those details certainly appear to be.

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The Soviet strategic forces' posture, considered in the context of what broadly may be called war survival measures, is the posture of a state with a thoroughgoing "war-fighting" approach to deterrence. That Soviet posture implies the beliefs (or working hypotheses) that: large-scale nuclear war could occur; the USSR, by its unilateral efforts, could (or might) enforce a range of different outcomes; and that the differences among those outcomes could matter. One must hasten to add that it is not claimed here that the USSR believes: that nuclear war will occur; that any large-scale East-West war must be a nuclear war; or necessarily that it would secure any reasonable facsimile of victory in a nuclear war. At the level of policy declaration as contrasted somewhat with policy as capability, there is not a great deal to distinguish major aspects of Soviet, from US, nuclear strategy. The USSR has expended vastly greater assets for the physical protection of leadership cadres than has the United States indeed, there is no comparison between the two. The USSR has sought to provide for the survival in nuclear war of all key assets of the state; the United States does not try. 17 But US policy as declaration is scarcely less devoted to the idea of continuity of government than is Soviet policy. Soviet and US military styles in operational nuclear strategy would probably differ markedly. However, what is there about the Soviet nuclear-armed force posture and its support (and other relevant) systems from which the grand design of Soviet nuclear strategy might be deduced? In overall size, at approximately 11,500 plus weapons, Soviet strategic nuclear forces effectively are on a rough numerical par with those of the United States. In diversity, the Soviet triad is unbalanced in favor of its landbased missile leg. However, the US triad is unbalanced in the low warhead allocation to its ICBM force - allowing numerical pride of place to the SLBM force. While the USSR has provided for pre-launch survivability in a probable START era by agility as well as silo hardening for its longest suit, ICBMs, the United States is committed unhealthily to high concentration of SLBM warheads in relatively few Ohio class SSBN hulls. The USSR has dedicated such a wealth of assets to strategic C3I that that area, for all its undoubted significance, may not carry the promise of high reward to US nuclear targeteers. In the 1980s, in particular, the United States committed itself to making a reality of the principle that minimum essential C3I must survive as long as the forces that they serve.18 That worthy ambition is challenged by the fact that the strategic forces are inherently more survivable than is their C 3 I: still, much progress has been made.

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The USSR has purchased such offensive and defensive counterforce capability as the state of their technical art has permitted. As a matter of strategic objectives, the United States is scarcely less dedicated to the performance of counterforce missions than is the USSR. Those strategic objectives may be inferred from Soviet force acquisitions that make no sense if they are not dedicated to the prosecution of technically stressful counterforce operations. In practice for twenty years the United States has all but eschewed defensive counterforce for central war (though not for regional conflicts). But, with the SDI the United States, if anything, is even more strongly committed (rhetorically, at least) to the idea of defensive counterforce than is the USSR. Whereas policies and strategies usefully can be labelled offensive or defensive, individual weapons have no inherently offensive or defensive, meaning; the context is everything. 19 An MX or an SS-18 mod 5ICBM is as entirely suitable for a variety of operational styles in nuclear strategy, as it is for the support of an offensive or a defensive national security policy. Other military capabilities Nuclear war, nuclear weapons, and nuclear strategy are not subjects isolated from war, weapons, and strategy more generally. The non-nuclear preference which appeared to dominate Soviet strategic thinking - though not planning or posture - in the 1980s, was an expression of new-found, if distinctly fragile, confidence both in conventional options and in nuclear counterdeterrence. 20 From the early 1970s to the early 1980s the Soviet Union sought to acquire the means both to wage and win regional Blitzkrieg campaigns around the Eurasian periphery of its imperium, and to deny the Western Alliance any contingently attractive options for nuclear employment. It is probably true to say that Soviet nuclear weapons in the 1980s were allocated the potentially decisive role of deterring attempts at "decision" via nuclear use by an enemy. One can infer reasonably that Soviet nuclear weapons of all kinds were charged primarily, though certainly not exclusively, with holding the ring square for the achievement and consolidation of regional conventional victories. This is not to evade the question of how the Soviet military establishment would be permitted to wage nuclear conflict in the event. But is is to claim that the event of nuclear conflict has come to be viewed in Moscow as being imbued far more with peril than with opportunity. The unmistakable preference for non-nuclear options in Soviet strategy

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in the 1980s undoubtedly reflected mature consideration of the associated dangers. However, that preference was encouraged by the contemporary Soviet belief in conventional alternatives for swift success in land warfare. The somewhat exaggerated, at least over-heated, Soviet anxiety over the West's advanced conventional munitions (ACMs), the multiplying geostrategic uncertainties about the shaky terms and vanishing future of the Warsaw Pact and the evolving balance of military force levels, may well induce Soviet reconsideration of the unique merit (as well as demerit) in nuclear ordnance. 21 In the context of CFE I, let alone an ambitiously mooted CFE II, and enormous uncertainties over the future structure of security in Europe, Moscow already has signaled some lessening of enthusiasm for truly thoroughgoing regional nuclear disarmament (for the leading example, the "third zero," for battlefield nuclear-capable weapon systems). A mix of NATO's ACMs (and their improvements), the newly adverse strategic geography of European conflict imposed by the demise of the Warsaw Pact, and the need for domestic economy, may well produce a Soviet Army radically less capable of rapidly overrunning West-Central Europe that has been the case until recently. But, even though such a noteworthy adverse change in the net combat prowess of Soviet landpower could imply a need for new nuclear competence, such competence would be unlikely to be achievable. That which is strategically very desirable, even necessary, is not necessarily tactically or operationally feasible. Intelligence When one considers the totality of the US, and other allies' (and functionally friendly), intelligence effort, the scale, diversity and sheer professionalism of the multi-form effort, it can be difficult to accept the fact of the severe limitations upon what is reliably knowable concerning the subjects of most importance. "Overhead" assets of many kinds can count most installations and pieces of hardware (provided they do not move) though deception remains a severe problem in monitoring things Soviet but those tend not to be the categories of knowledge with history-turning implications. The things that can be imaged one way or another, counted and more or less reliably monitored, indeed the entire world of "indications and warning" ("I and W") activity, can provide invaluable input for strategic and policy judgment, if one knows how to interpret what one sees or hears. Similarly, given the necessary ambiguity of policy intentions, or even over strategic objectives, there is everything to be said in favor of the real-time tactical monitoring of the adversary's behavior. (Even if Soviet policy

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motives are an enigma, it is essential to know if their Northern and Baltic fleets are surging into the Atlantic and North Seas.) Questions of outstanding interest for this inquiry include the following. Over what issues would the USSR choose to fight; when would it have resort to nuclear weapons; how would it wage nuclear war; how responsive would it be to some de facto guidelines for the practical control of the dangers of nuclear escalation, and so forth? Alas, none of the answers to questions such as these lends itself reliably to discovery by the intelligence community via imaging, listening, counting, and such like. The rounded study of Soviet/Russian phenomena, as well as the achievement of some intellectual grip on the subject of strategy, should educate a person to the point where his or her guesses concerning Soviet operational nuclear strategy ought to command a respectful audience. But, some of the more important issues may well be beyond study, though not beyond educated guesswork. For example, to what extent would the Soviet General Staff be permitted to wage war, nuclear and other, without detailed real-time guidance/interference by political leaders?22 Or, if the United States flexed an "extended (nuclear) deterrent" muscle in a substantial, but still highly constrained manner, how would the USSR respond? Pending the greatly undesired event, there can be no authoritative answer to questions such as these. Exercises Along with recent defectors with military, or other defense related, experience, electronic oversight of various kinds, and the typically ambiguous implications of military posture, military exercises are a prime source of information and disinformation. The dilemma in the design and conduct of exercises is a classic one. Armed forces require realistic preparation for mobilization, for crisis-time deployment, and war. But, the more realistic the exercise scenario and the conduct of training "games," the more an alert putative enemy might learn. Generally, there are important data to be gathered from exercises. There have to be. If exercises are important to the exerciser - as they have to be, else why hold them? - then they have to be a source of important information to interested foreigners. All levels of relevant information may be gathered: technological, tactical, operational, and strategic. Even attempts at deception can be revealing (why are they trying to hide what they appear to be trying to hide?). When, on what scale, and particularly whether, nuclear weapons play an active role in Soviet military exercises, are significant issues well worth watching (as, of course, we do). Both historical experience and common sense suggest that the wise way

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to use exercises deceptively is not to train forces in wholly fanciful maneuvers, but rather to conceal blueprints for contingent action among a variety of activities. Troops have to be trained realistically, but that training need not be conducted in such a way that its operational, let alone strategic and policy, implications are transparently obvious. It is worth mentioning that an actual intention to attack might be concealed within a large-scale military, naval, and strategic-forces' exercise. As the superpowers thin-out their forces in Central Europe, perhaps even disengage from the erstwhile line of scrimmage, the strategic advantage to be gained by an attack transitioning out of an exercise should be increased, even though it should become geographically more difficult to effect. Soviet military thinking, new or otherwise, does not need education in the value of maskirovka - or surprise and surprise effect overall. Writings and statements Glasnost may well destabilize the Soviet polity and its imperium more thoroughly than perestroika and other efforts at centrally managed, measured reform can possibly handle. To date, notwithstanding the nominal (though far short of actual) 50 percent reductions agreed to for START-accountable warhead totals which could slash the size of strategicforce stockpiles, "new thinking" on nuclear strategy is less than massively apparent in responsible circles. There has been some talk about minimum deterrence at low levels of nuclear weaponry, but nothing with self-evident policy or military-professional authority. Given the predominance of anodyne cliches about being ready to deliver a staggering rebuff to the enemies of the USSR and of peace, the eager Western Soviet-watcher finds little of much interest on Soviet nuclear strategy from the Soviet printed page. In the mid-1970s, and particularly following Leonid Brezhnev's Tula speech of January 1977, much of the color and life went out of Western-accessible Soviet writings on the subject of the utility of nuclear weapons in war. 23 There can be little doubt that Soviet leaders were embarrassed by the propaganda (and US defense budget-support) value of Soviet writings on the prospects for victory in nuclear war. But also it would seem to have been the case that in the USSR, as - somewhat later - in the West, operational military interest in nuclear weapons waned severely. After the mid-1970s the USSR imposed a much stronger discipline on its military writers. While alert to deception campaigns and to the seduction of fashion, still as Peter Vigor points out 24 - rules of scholarship should enable Western Soviet-watchers to make disciplined use of Soviet writings and statements.

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Because interpretations of the putative Soviet enemy play as a factor in internal US defense and foreign policy debate, all kinds of lawyers' tricks are employed in order to make the particular case desired at the moment. The overwhelming bulk of the inordinately tedious professional Soviet military literature that is available in the West should be taken at face value. That literature is fostered to further the professional education of an intensely professional defense community, not to deceive Western commentators. Such relative, if dated, gems as the Officer's Library series,25 or, more especially, the 1973-75 lectures smuggled out of the Voroshilov Academy (of the General Staff), are entirely credible and somewhat informative.26 However, direct Soviet commentary on the design of Soviet nuclear strategy, or even on the factors which bear on such design, is distinguished by its rarity. Analogically, Western seekers after knowledge of Soviet nuclear strategy have to shift tons of earth or very low grade ore before, if ever, they discover truly precious metal. Common sense and general knowledge

Whether it was the Marquis de Custine in 1839, or Tibor Szamuely in 1974, insightful commentators on matters Russian have a healthy habit of emphasizing the cultural particularity of their subject. Tinted though Soviet military spectacles have been by ideological and Great Russian national cultural perspectives, still the Soviet defense community is immensely respectful of what it understands by objective conditions. In his flawed masterpiece, Strategy: The Logic of Peace and War27 - following some of the major themes introduced by Carl von Clausewitz in On War Edward N. Luttwak posits and explores enduring relations among different levels of analysis and treats a paradoxical, quintessentially strategic, logic at every level (technical, tactical, operational, theater, and grand strategic). There is some value to general knowledge of strategic phenomena - a general knowledge that can be applied to the Soviet case. It should be noted that Soviet foreign policy similarly is all but fully explicable with reference to the general workings of international security politics. There is no such phenomenon as a distinctively socialist (or pseudo-socialist) defense strategy, any more than there is a socialist foreign policy (this is one of Francis Fukuyama's minor errors). It must never be forgotten that Soviet military thinking and planning, in very large part indeed, is the thinking and the planning of the world's greatest continental power, reasoning imperially. But, as this chapter has suggested already, there is much common ground between the current superpowers on matters of nuclear strategy, even if their particular

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strategic cultures encourage them to seek to plant rather different strategy designs in that ground. For reasons of history, geography, and what may be termed the distinctively Soviet/Russian politics of defense planning and strategymaking, it is probable that Soviet operational responses to some of the major questions posed by nuclear weapons for policy, grand and military strategy, are different from those which comprise orthodox wisdom among the cognoscenti of Washington, DC, and Santa Monica. However, those operational responses certainly are founded upon a rigorous and clear-eyed study of what are believed to be objective conditions, and where different from the gospel according to Thomas Schelling, Glenn Kent, or Albert Wohlstetter, will not be idiosyncratically different.28 Questions that matter and questions that do not Can the USSR compete effectively in strategic nuclear forces? Viewed as two science-based defense industrial systems, the Western World and what tentatively remains of the Soviet empire are an order of magnitude apart in high-technological competence. 29 If the comparison is made much more broadly between "the West" (including both actual and strategically functional allies in East Asia) and the USSR with reference to defense mobilization potential of all kinds, the second-class character of the Soviet competitor is revealed even more starkly. However, notwithstanding the current time of admittedly severe troubles in the East (in the territorial as well as the all but defunct hegemonic empire), several factors have enabled the Soviet Union to play much above her innate scientific-economic strength. Specifically: the Western foe comprises a coalition which generates security at a level far below the sum of its many parts; the superpower competitor is a popular democracy politically unable to sustain a very high level of commitment to military competition; the nuclear thread seems to contradict much of the traditional logic of military competition; the strategic geography of the Soviet imperium provides - or provided - a concentration of threat via a medium (landpower) wherein Soviet competitive disadvantage was minimized; the Soviet command economy can focus its energies effectively, if not efficiently, on matters of high state priority in the security field; and in its several major non-military aspects, Soviet grand strategy can provide some compensation for the weaknesses of Soviet laboratories and factories.30 Provided one important, if arguable, caveat is not forgotten, the answer to the question "can the USSR compete effectively in strategic nuclear forces?" has to be in the affirmative. The caveat pertains to the US ability and willingness to react, indeed overreact, to belatedly determined identifi-

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cation of threat. Thus far, at least, certainly for a quarter-century, nuclear armaments have not lent themselves to exploitation as an instrument of military decision. The Soviet Union can menace the pre-launch survivability of most US ICBMs in silos, SSBNs in port, and some fraction of the manned bomber force on runways. But, no combination of quantity of nuclear firepower or attainable quality in weapon systems, has carried a plausible promise of classical style victory. The Soviet experience of the 1970s and 1980s was that more or less disputable advantage31 could be secured through prowess in its traditional arm of excellence, very long range artillery (ICBMs). But, the theoretical gain in net hard-target counterforce capability was both swamped by its limited military (and political) significance, and served eventually to trigger potentially very disadvantageous US competitive responses. To date, the Soviet Union knows that it could not design, build and operate a strategic defensive architecture against long-range ballistic missiles which would achieve strategically significant kill ratios. However, Soviet scientists and defense planners appear to have been convinced that the United States - let alone the West (including Japanese, West German, and Israeli hightechnology industries) more generally - just might succeed in constructing an SDI which could fulfill truly ambitious design goals.32 The argument must not be overstated. Soviet political leaders and defense planners seem to have been operating of very recent years upon the basis of the beliefs that they could not build a central Soviet war-winning offense-defense military posture, but that the United States just might be able to do so. Moreover, Moscow also has come to appreciate that the truly dedicated pursuit of military and political advantage over the United States is impracticable, given the current unsatisfactory terms of competition. Furthermore, frantic overt competition is counterproductive in that it prods the Western giant into a quantity and quality of competitive behavior that the USSR cannot possibly match. The much vilified idea attributed to the Reagan Administration in 1981-82 of, in effect, spending the USSR into bankruptcy, no longer looks quite so primitive or foolish. Where else did perestroika and glasnost come from if not from desperate Soviet recognition that, unreformed, they were outclassed in their ability to compete? To provide an intelligent answer to the question, "Can the Soviet Union compete?", it is necessary to ask, "compete to achieve what?" Moscow cannot compete to achieve the ability to wage and win a central nuclear war. But, even the United States would seem to be unable to achieve such a military-technical capability. Victory or defeat in war has rarely been strictly a matter of the economic ability to compete (though 1914-18 was an approximation of such a case). It is possible that the ability to wage central

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war to a favorable decision will be reacquired at some point in the next century. The Soviet Union knows that it must stay in touch with the highest of high technologies for that reason, if for no others. However, in order to compete satisfactorily in strategic nuclear arms, the Soviet Union does not require that its nuclear-armed forces be able to win a classical victory. Instead, those forces must be able to deny US - or any other country's statecraft and strategy coercive benefit from nuclear threat or actual nuclear use. Ideally, in Moscow's perspective, Soviet nuclear-armed forces would deny foes nuclear compellent options either as an instrument for gain or, more likely, as a tool of controlled escalation intended to thwart Soviet nonnuclear action. 33 Can START help Soviet statecraft and strategy? START, as with CFE, makes sense only within a framework of competition in strategic relations. If political peace truly breaks out, then START and CFE would be irrelevant at best and an actual hindrance to improving relations, at worst. START should be regarded in the West grand-strategically as an element of the arms control instrument of Soviet policy. START is of great importance in Soviet statecraft because: it treats the weapons which have come almost to define superpower status; it addresses the realm of military competition to which Americans are most sensitive; and it speaks to that aspect of the overall strategic rivalry (except for the naval dimension) in which the Soviet Union is most at a structural competitive disadvantage. Above all else, the START process is helpful to Soviet statecraft and strategy as a net dampener of US strategic competitive effort. Soviet leaders, unlike many conservative and liberal commentators in the United States, know that START is insignificant for political issues of peace or war and bears scarcely worth mentioning upon matters of military advantage. Given that the unpredictability of the United States has been a cause of occasional alarm in Moscow, it is important to note the standard claim that arms control benefits stability because it increases the predictability of behavior by the High Contracting Parties. This claim is not a very persuasive one, historically and logically appraised. If the will to compete is still present, then arms control agreements channel competition into areas that remain unlicensed (large cruisers in the 1920s, intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the 1970s). Furthermore, no arms control regime could serve to offset a US unpredictability that reflected genuine security alarm. Moscow may have hopes, but can hardly have expectations, that START would effect the "lulling" of Western foes.34 Rather, START provides

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some rules for the conduct of the strategic arms competition which, though of little significance for great or less great issues of stability, do themselves, and by the tone they set, help to inhibit Western competitive prowess. In other words, it is not necessarily the Soviet purpose to employ START to set snares and create or feed delusions in the United States. But, along with domestic economic considerations, START could be a significant inhibitor of US military-technical programs. Moscow does not rely upon START to preclude the United States from developing the ability to win a World War III, let alone - through a pattern of cheating and illicit technical acquisition across frontiers - to allow the Soviet Union to acquire the weapons which might deliver a major military advantage. At least until the political melt-down of the structure of Soviet authority in East-Central Europe, Soviet-American military competition was conducted on two very uneven playing fields. Because of the geopolitics of superpower rivalry and the truly coalition character of the West the playing field of West-Central Europe was very uneven in the Soviet favor, while the playing field of the scientific-industrial bases was distinctly uneven to the Soviet disadvantage. START, which many Americans think of as a contribution to a deeply technical idea of strategic stability, instead - in Soviet perspective - is a thoroughly political institution intended by the Soviet Union to encourage the United States to play below its true capabilities. In the context of the Western Alliance, though not vis-a-vis China, Moscow does not appear to believe that nuclear weapons are very useful for any strategic purpose more ambitious than the deterrence of nuclear use by others. However, it remains the Soviet way to seek such military advantage as incompetent foreign negotiators or treaty-terms verifiers, and a slack pace of US force modernization, permit. The on-going and impending changes in the military balance in Europe will need to be considered both in the round, which is to say with respect to developments on both sides, not just to the East, and with reference to Mikhail Gorbachev's range of practicable alternatives. The 1989 admission of felonious conduct with the Krasnoyarsk PAR (phased-array radar) was something less than a resounding change of Soviet heart or policy. Moscow owned up, very belatedly, to the fact that Krasnoyarsk was a massive violation of the ABM treaty of 1972. But, the admission of guilt was forthcoming only when it became apparent that progress in START would be politically impossible in the absence of such a Soviet mea culpa. Notwithstanding occasional rhetorical claims to the contrary, the United States does not conduct defense postural and arms control planning as a

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single broad enterprise. 35 The result, inevitably, is that military planners have to do the best with the quantitative and qualitative constraints that proved negotiable (or intellectually fashionable). Because of weapon system design from a previous era of assumptions, and because of the politics of defense budgeting in an era of arguable peace, it is a virtual certainty that the START process, as usual with the arms control, will tend to aggravate rather than alleviate existing military-technical problems. Conservatives will claim, with some justice that - for example - START will worsen the high-quality warhead to hard target ratio to the US disadvantage; that a reduced SSBN fleet will have to contend with unconstrained Soviet ASW capability; and that large-scale offensive missile reductions would enhance the strategic value of a Soviet BMD ("Red Shield") break-out from the ABM treaty regime. These claims are not without merit, but they would leave the USSR still so far distant from a reliable war-winning force that they should be discounted heavily as arguments leading Moscow to favor a START treaty. As suggested above, the real strategic value of START to the USSR almost certainly lies in its worth as a net dampener of the pace and the quantity of US competitive performance. How would the Soviet Union attempt to wage a central nuclear war? Western scholars, and most Soviet scholars, do not know the answer to this critically important question. The direct evidence on the basis of which an answer might be constructed ranges from the poor to the very poor (see the quality of evidence provided for the> relevant writings of William T. Lee, Notra Trulock, Edward Warner, Steven Meyer, and Joseph Douglass inter alia).36 The evidence that can be assembled in support of an answer to the question tends to contradict common sense. Rather after the fashion of some historians of early medieval times, Western commentators on Soviet nuclear strategy have no choice other than to exceed the strict bounds of the evidence available. Broadly speaking, there are two schools of Western thought on Soviet nuclear strategy for central war. The first school, led most copiously in terms of publications by Notra Trulock, 37 holds that the Soviet Union probably would attempt to wage what could be called a limited (central) nuclear war. Such a Soviet approach would endeavor to wage as little war as would be compatible with war aims. Moscow, recognizing that it could not win a war if US retaliation was unrestrained, would seek to confine its targeting rigorously to US military assets, and probably would risk paying some military price as an inescapable consequence of an attempt to leave

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the US national command authorities (NCA) intact. It is readily apparent that this view of central nuclear war, in the absence of direct evidence of Soviet intentions, amounts both to the projection of dominant American ideas on nuclear strategy, escalation control, and war termination, upon the USSR, and to recognition of an ancient maxim that an enemy should be left an alternative to a fight to the death. The second school of thought on Soviet nuclear strategy holds that Soviet strategic culture denies, or at least very strongly encourages the denial of, the possibility of limited central nuclear war. In this view of the Soviet official mind-set, a nuclear assault upon the homeland would be interpreted on the receiving end as a bid for complete victory.38 The context could be all important, but it may be that nuclear assault on the Soviet homeland itself would define the context and the terms of engagement. Politically, too much would be at stake for the superpowers to fight each other at home according to some variant of the caricature of eighteenth-century war doctrine which helped inspire Western limited-war theory in the 1950s. None the less, Soviet military planners and operators would treat nuclear-armed forces as scarce assets to be employed cost-effectively; that is to say efficiently. However, in the view of this second school of thought Soviet strategy would not be concerned to control escalation (save by brute force) or to establish favorable conditions for a negotiated "war termination." Instead, Soviet military power would be applied for the proximate goal of securing a clear, favorable military decision. Common sense suggests that the first school of thought ought to be correct. Is it reasonable to believe that the same Soviet Union which would be very reluctant to have resort to nuclear weapons in a regional conflict,39 and which has claimed authoritatively that it would control such nuclear resort carefully, would wage a central nuclear conflict as if it were an old fashioned war which could be won decisively? Furthermore, even if the military professionals on the General Staff are the sole authors and would be the authoritative executors of the war plans, is it reasonable to believe that political leaders on the wartime Stavka would not intrude themselves into some critical details of nuclear force application?40 Though with generally poor results, Joseph Stalin attempted to play field commander in 1941-42 (and subsequently he certainly monitored very closely the performance of those to whom he had delegated operational command). 41 Is it likely that a future Soviet/Russian president would not endeavor to do likewise, given what would be at stake? Indeed, after 1914 generals lost their licenses to conduct war according to the dictates of military expediency. It is entirely possible, for example, that a US president would find none of the pre-planned SIOP options to be responsive to his policy needs.

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Four points warrant citation as bearing upon, or answering directly, the question posed about Soviet choice of strategy for the conduct of central Soviet war. First, Soviet military and civilian capabilities for waging and surviving war are inherently ambiguous. Improvements in Soviet strategic C 3 I, in the technical reliability of their weapon systems on alert, in the pre-launch survivability of forces, and in the accuracy with which weapons can be laid down at great distances - are all points which lend themselves to alternative interpretation vis-d-vis Soviet preferences in strategy. Second, it would seem to be sensible, or perhaps just prudent, to take Soviet leaders and commentators at face value when they make the logical, if potentially very dangerous, argument that the conduct of war must be governed by its political purposes. That view is both an unintelligent, even fatalistic, reading of Clausewitz and is historically less than fully persuasive. Clausewitz's "grammar" of war may make no sense without reference to policy, but - as the master noted - war does have a grammar, a nature, of its own which "policy" needs to understand. None the less, Soviet leaders and commentators have offered no encouragement to the idea that a central war could be waged to any conclusion other than the defeat of one side or the other (or both). Defeat, of course, can have different meanings for different polities. Third, as best one can tell from the evidence available, the Soviet approach to war does not include education in the supposedly strategic theories and processes of crisis management, threshold observance for escalation control, and war termination. In practice, of course the Soviet Union manages crises, recognizes the salience of some thresholds for the control of violence, and seeks to terminate conflicts. However, Soviet strategic culture approaches those functions in a distinctly unAmerican manner. As a caveat, one should not lightly project Soviet style in regional crises or conflicts for the shaping of US expectations of Soviet style in the conduct of central nuclear war. Fourth, whether or not the result would be a foredoomed attempt to "conventionalize" that which inherently is not conventional,42 Soviet statements of all kinds are consistent only with the view that should they ever be compelled, very reluctantly, to wage central nuclear war, they would seek, though not confidently expect to achieve, a clear military (and hence political) decision. One cannot and should not predict that the USSR assuredly would seek to win a war which its experts, as well as common sense, would deny could be won. But, the canons of scholarship, and a concern lest national strategic cultural assumptions not mislead, oblige us to behave as if the USSR would seek to win a World War III in a classical military fashion. There are obvious commonsense, practical reasons why

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Soviet leaders should take a distinctly non-traditional view of central nuclear war (with the West if not with China) - which is to say a view of such a war which eschews interest in seeking military victory (but not in avoiding defeat). Moreover, those are reasons sufficiently powerful for the United States to be motivated to offer at least the possibility of a structure of conflict that need not lead to a general catastrophe. It is one thing to endorse a strategy that could fail deadly; it is quite another to endorse a strategy that, if tested, must fail deadly. This fourth point amounts to the advice: prepare for the worst, but make some intelligent provision to facilitate a less bad sequence of events. Has Soviet nuclear strategy changed? Contingency plans for the application of nuclear firepower are always changing in detail, as the inventory of weapons and the target base evolve. However, given the difficulty described above of understanding Soviet nuclear strategy, there is no evidence of recent years of any noteworthy change in that strategy for the conduct of central nuclear war. Indeed, there is no reason why evidence of such change may be awaiting discovery. Not only is there no evidence of authoritative (as opposed to civilian speculative) new military thinking pertaining to nuclear strategy for central war, in addition it is not obvious that there is room for new thinking. Long before the advent of the much heralded "new thinking," Soviet leaders would seem to have decided that although the USSR should endeavor to secure the best military outcome available in the event of general war, bilateral disaster was the most probable result of such a conflict. Notwithstanding the Soviet effort to secure such advantage as might be secured through vigorous offensive-defensive strategic-forces' competition, the overriding purpose of that competition has been, and remains, the negative one of deterring US (inter alia) initiatives. Should Soviet leaders come to feel an unaccustomed lack of coercive options on the ground as the structure of European security changes, then it is possible that more demanding (i.e. compellent) missions may be asked of their "strategic" (perhaps just nuclear-armed) forces. Lest the thoughts just expressed should seem unduly conservative, readers should consider the major continuities in US central-war strategy and nuclear targeting from the revision of the first SIOP (1960) in 1961 (SIOP-62) until SIOP-6F of 1989.43 Enough has been published about US targeting policy to support the point that even in a country where ideas on central war strategy are debated intensively, and where ideas come and go as fashions, relatively little of major significance has changed over the

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decades. Weapon systems phase in and are phased out (some come and stay), and the tactical feasibility of particular missions will fluctuate technically, but truly "new thinking" about nuclear strategy is a rarity indeed and there is little in evidence in Moscow today. Undoubtedly there is considerable flux and uncertainty in the militarytechnical dimension of Soviet military doctrine. That uncertainty pertains both to attempts to respond to political insistence upon a less offensive orientation to force posture and plans, and to the proper meaning of the latest technical revolution in military affairs.44 Many Soviet military theorists believe that formerly valid distinctions between offensive and defensive weapons are in the process of definitive erosion. Also, they believe that NATO's (future) arsenal of ACMs, heavily grouped into "strike-reconnaissance complexes," could thwart the operational designs of Soviet ground forces. Overall, pending the need to accommodate new (Soviet) defensive weapons (ground and space-based), and perhaps to plan opportunistically to take advantage of new possibilities for damage limitation granted by unwise (past, present, and future) US decisions on strategic force posture under the influence of START, one should not anticipate important change in Soviet strategy for the conduct of central nuclear war. The realm of sensible choice for the Soviet Union is far less over strategic forces than it is over general purpose forces; an important point, albeit not unique to the Soviet case. After all, what might constitute the strategic-force equivalent of the military evacuation of East-Central Europe? (Possibly the endorsement of some concept of a "minimum deterrent.") But a Soviet Union acutely aware that it was surrendering the strategic leverage of a landpower previously plainly superior in Europe, would not be likely to be a Soviet Union willing to choose to reduce the military rationality of its central-war forces. However, crystal balls quite aside, as of this time of writing there is no authoritative Soviet evidence indicating anything resembling radical "new thinking" on nuclear strategy for central war. The four questions addressed above are all important and merit attention. The three remaining questions are none of them important, because the answers are quite trivially obvious in Soviet perspective. But, so many Western commentators believe that these questions - and the answers - are significant, that it is necessary to treat them here, if only very briefly. First, could a nuclear war be won? Soviet and US leaders recognize that a war in which some nuclear weapons were used could be won. The superpowers, inter alia, could use nuclear weapons and win a war. However, both sides tacitly agree that an attempt to secure a classic military victory with the outright, definitive defeat of the other superpower, is, pro

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tern, at least, impractical. Soviet leaders give every evidence of believing that nuclear war could occur, that a range of outcomes is possible, that the differences on that range could matter enormously, and that it is the duty of a nuclear-armed state to make militarily intelligent contingency plans for the efficient employment of nuclear weapons. Second, must the USSR compete with the United States? Notwithstanding domestic perestroika and "new thinking" on foreign and military affairs, there is no sign that Mikhail Gorbachev is suffering from galloping naivetethe classic ailment of Western liberals. Security is always relative, and relations of influence and anxiety are ever dynamic. The current upheaval in the Soviet empire would appear to have been caused predominantly by the felt need of the Soviet leadership to improve the competitive trim of their imperial polity. The fact that perestroika has led to the catastrophic demotion of the CPSU was not predictable long in advance; neither was it intended by Gorbachev. Reform and revolution can have a dynamic all their own. In order to effect the necessary reforms (the scope of which has changed over the years), the USSR elected to destabilize its own hegemonic empire in East-Central Europe (which is to say to deny support to non-reformminded leaders), and (hopefully) maintain sufficient geopolitical dominance as to yield her the kind of political influence in Europe that her security requires. Far from constituting evidence of the future irrelevance of superpower competition, Gorbachev's new thinking provides the most convincing proof of Soviet determination so to reform that they will be able to compete effectively in the next century. As Stalin so wisely said, "[t]hose who fall behind get beaten." T h i r d , is there an arms control alternative

to the superpower

military

competition? Soviet strategic culture has its blind spots - as with its often misplaced enthusiasm for a quantifiably "scientific" approach to many matters of defense analysis which transcend the purely tactical (which is quantifiable). However, it is a great strength of Soviet strategic culture that it tends not to confuse the political with the administrative. Soviet leaders have never endorsed or encouraged the very American idea that some of the political duties of the two security communities can be devolved upon technical experts. 45 If anything, traditionally the USSR has overcentralized at the top. Moscow has taken an unreasonably and impractically extensive view of what constitutes properly political, as contrasted with technical administrative, subjects. In Soviet strategic culture the idea is close to absurd that there is, or could be, an arms control process with a distinctive militarytechnical logic of stability, through which the superpowers could channel much of their strategic relationship. There is a logic of power politics and

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there is an evolving correlation of forces, including a multi-faceted relationship, which must influence policy choice. But, the notion that there is a military-technical theory of strategic stability that can be applied, or, as it were, administered, by experts in an arms control process, is simply unSoviet. It should be recalled that what Soviet authorities refer to as their military doctrine has a military-technical dimension; that dimension is subordinate to high political direction. In Soviet strategic culture and consequently in day-by-day practice, arms control is a valued instrument of grand strategy. Arms control cannot have a strategic logic of its own. Arms control cannot function as an effective substitute for military competition in the way that such competition can substitute for war, because a "process" of arms control engagement has meaning only as an expression of a political urge to compete. If the urge to compete erodes and vanishes, then an arms control nexus becomes irrelevant. Conclusions Seven major points stand out as worth citing as conclusions to this chapter. First, the scope for opinion on Soviet nuclear strategy remains uncomfortably high. Direct evidence on Soviet preferences, let alone clear choices, in nuclear strategy, is all but totally absent. Western governments know a great deal about the capabilities and standard procedures of Soviet nucleararmed forces, and from intelligence data of all kinds they can make some plausible guesses about Soviet crisis-time moves. But, in answer to the question, "how would Moscow choose to fight its nuclear-armed central war forces in face of an enemy endeavoring to wage nuclear war with considerable targeting restraint?" one is in the realm only of guesswork. To date, Soviet defense professionals have not debated Soviet centralwar strategy in public. Large and flexibly capable land forces are to some degree constrained in their operational choices by the demands of terrain and weather. Central-war nuclear forces, with only modest exceptions, are not severely limited by physical geography in the choices they provide to policymakers. 46 Second, the cultural factors which influence perception are disciplined, to the degree that they are not themselves shaped, by objective conditions. Those conditions (the width of the Pacific Ocean, the general level of national technical and managerial competence, and so forth) will both affect what is perceived to be possible and, of course, will influence strongly what is practicably achievable. Soviet military doctrine, and certainly Soviet nuclear strategy, manifestly has been shaped by some highly plausible appreciations, or perceptions, of objective conditions. Objective

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conditions are dynamic. Net military competence varies from period to period (consider the combat prowess, qualitatively and quantitatively, of the Soviet Army, over the years 1939 - as revealed in Finland - to 1945). Whatever one discovers at the present time about Soviet strategic culture, or about technical developments in Soviet ICBMs, defense radars, and the like, Soviet military doctrine is dominated by the objective condition - and recognition of the same - that nuclear war against the United States cannot reliably be waged to achieve a classic military victory. Nuclear war should function to the net Soviet tactical and operational advantage in most circumstances at sea. But that judgment is overborne in significance by the strong probability that a Western Alliance unable to use its transAtlantic or transpacific sea lines of communication, would have prompt resort to nuclear weapons on land. 47 Third, within the severe constraints imposed by tolerably accurate recognition of objective conditions, the strategic culture that is the product of centuries of more or less unique historical experience works to fashion preferences and actual choices. It is a reality that a full-scale, or even much of, a SIOP-RISOP "exchange," must prove to be mutually self-defeating, but the culturally distinctive superpowers have reacted to that frustrating apparent fact in rather different ways (at least in so far as one can tell from open sources on the US side, and from the highly ambiguous evidence on the Soviet side). The USSR consistently has said that it rejects American strategic ideas on the controlled conduct of limited central war. On the one hand there lurks the probably unrealistic US aspiration for escalation control in a carefully conducted central nuclear war. On the other hand there hovers the Soviet aspiration that somehow, on the night and contrary to analysisbased judgment and common sense, Soviet nuclear arms could enforce a useful level of damage limitation. In practice, neither superpower has a militarily sufficiently useful central nuclear war posture as reliably to be able to coerce, or just bludgeon, its way to victory. Everybody knows this, but responsible defense officials must do their best with the technically, and hence tactically, inadequate military tools extant (and hope for a more counterforce-capable tomorrow). Fourth, although the Soviet Union of the early 1990s appears to be willing, even eager, to reduce nuclear-armed central-war forces by a nominal 50 percent (in START) or more (a START II), the political, strategic, operational, and tactical fundamentals of long-range nuclear forces have yet to be debated publicly. If there is a great Soviet debate underway on the utility or character of the strategic forces, it has yet to be monitored in the West. Already, Soviet postural evolution seems intelligently to have anticipated probable START limits (consider the case of

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the road-mobile single-warhead SS-25, for example).48 The (new) thinking that really mattered about the strategic utility, and hence policy and strategic purposes of central-war nuclear forces, appears to have been settled as of the close of the 1970s at the latest. If the United States could not be deterred from taking nuclear initiatives, then Soviet nuclear-armed forces would be charged to do their best to achieve the military conditions for an overall political victory. Fifth, a mixture of strategic-cultural preference and recognition of objective conditions renders it unlikely that Soviet nuclear strategy for central war will change radically in the 1990s. The political possibility of a superpower central war may alter, but that is a very different matter. So long as the USSR retains a nuclear arsenal it must enjoy the services of strategy for the contingent employment of that arsenal. Everything in Russian history tells its contemporary legatees to attempt to prepare for war in as militarily rational a manner as possible. Far from seeking to accommodate radical change in their nuclear strategy, Soviet leaders are struggling politically - thus far successfully - to avoid having to adjust precipitately to cumulatively dramatic change in the central-war threat posed by the United States. Specifically, Soviet diplomacy has been waging political warfare against the rather vague US proposal, or threat, to deploy new strategic defenses. Sixth, a possible START treaty regime which might well reduce the US central war arsenal to approximately 9,500 weapons (including nonSTART-accountable warheads) is unlikely to trigger drastic, or even very noticeable, change in Soviet nuclear strategy. It is very probable that the USSR, though economically generally embarrassed, will compete under START more vigorously and less legally than will the United States. Such is the historical pattern of behavior under formal arms control restraint. There is nothing in the structure of the pending START treaty, particularly if treaty adherence is linked more or less formally to continued self-restraint in BMD testing and deployment, which should lend itself to exploitation for the effecting of very important changes in Soviet nuclear strategy. Seventh and finally, the point cannot be overemphasized that the nuclear strategy of the USSR, or of a successor state to the USSR, must be a subject of permanent interest. That superpower, deeply troubled or not, will remain heavily nuclear armed and in need of the services of strategic ideas and plans for the contingent operational direction of its nuclear arsenal. The terms and conditions of the US-Soviet security relationship could range from a freely expressed enmity to entente (or even alliance). However, Soviet nuclear strategy will remain both culturally stamped and responsible to a general logic which binds strategy to policy purpose.

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1 National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM)-242 of 1974 and Presidential Directive (PD)-59, and related matters of US strategic nuclear targeting policy, are treated in Desmond Ball and Jeffrey Richelson (eds.), Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986). 2 For a detailed examination of this issue, see Colin S. Gray, "ICBM's and Deterrence: The Controversy Over Prompt Launch," The Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 10, no. 3 (September 1987), 285-309. 3 See Michael Howard, History of the Second World War: Grand Strategy. Vol. iv, August 1942-September 1943 (London: HMSO, 1970). Soviet ground and air forces similarly were unfit in 1941 for trial by battle with the Wehrmacht- but they had no choice. 4 See Yitzhak Klein, "A Theory of Strategic Culture," Comparative Strategy, vol. 10, no. 1 (January-March 1991), 3-23; and Joseph Rothschild, "Culture and War," in Stephanie G. Neuman and Robert E. Harkavy (eds.), The Lessons of Recent Wars in the Third World: Vol. n. Comparative Dimensions (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987), pp. 53-72. Also see the collection of essays, Williamson Murray and Alvin H. Bernstein (eds.), The Making of Strategy (Boston: Allen and Unwin, forthcoming). 5 See Colin Gray, War, Peace, and Victory: Strategy and Statecraft for the Next Century (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990). 6 "Yet just as individuals are conditioned by the environment in which they grow up, so are governments conditioned by the same environment, and reflect, as well as reflect upon, national characteristics. These characteristics are shaped by geography, climate, historical experiences, and religious beliefs, which in turn determine economic circumstances, national prejudices, ideals or ideologies." Christopher N. Donnelly, Red Banner: The Soviet Military System in Peace and War (Coulsdon [UK]: Jane's Information Group, 1988), p. 13. 7 James Sherr, Soviet Power: The Continuing Challenge (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987), p. 111. 8 Probably the most rigorous and insightful treatment of the "revolutionary" thesis is Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). 9 Quoted in Peter P. Witonski (ed.), Gibbon for Moderns: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, with Lessons for America Today (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House Publishers, 1974), p. 15. 10 For a good example, see V. V. Druzhinin and D. S. Kontorov, Decision Making and Automation: Concept, Algorithm, Decision (A Soviet View). Soviet Military Thought Series of the US Air Force, no. 6 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1975; Moscow, 1972). Note Christopher Donnelly's comments on the Soviet reliance upon mathematical calculation in "The Development of Military Policy Under Gorbachev," in Donnelly (ed.), Gorbachev's Revolution: Economic Pressures and Defence Realities (Coulsdon [UK]: Jane's Information Group, 1989), pp. 124, 136. According to Donnelly, "Military Policy under Gorbachev," this operational-level reliance is "almost total" (p. 136). 11 As John Erickson has noted, Soviet scholars are wont to use the Great Patriotic War "as a vast data base." The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin's War With Germany,

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13 14

15

16 17

18

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Vol. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), p. viii. For a useful collection of essays by Western scholars, see Jonathan R. Adelman and Christann Lea Gibson (eds.), Contemporary Soviet Military Affairs: The Legacy of World War II (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989). Maritime-slanted Western analyses relevant to an attempt to answer this question include Michael McGwire, Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1987); and Colin S. Gray, Competitive Grand Strategies and The Roles of the Navy (Fairfax, VA: National Security Research, January 1989). See Chris Bellamy, Red God of War: Soviet Artillery and Rocket Forces (London: Brassey's Defence Publishers, 1986). This is not to deny that the vulnerable forward-continentalist perspectives of some European allies, not to mention the enduring continentalist urges of the United States itself, could overcome the global-maritime concepts which might encourage Washington to seek to wage a protracted conflict. American history has taught its policymaking legatees to seek swift solutions to complex problems by means of the shortest route. Anglo-American strategy arguments in 1942-44 reflected the clash between somewhat differing theories of victory, which expressed differences between British and American strategic culture. See Samuel P. Huntington, American Military Strategy, Policy Papers in International Affairs, no. 28 (Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1986); and Colin S. Gray, "Strategy in the Nuclear Age: The United States, 1945-1990," in Murray and Bernstein (eds.), The Making of Strategy. Aside from such standard sources as the annual US official Soviet Military Power (1981-90, to date), and the trade press (Aviation Week and Jane's Defence Weekly, preeminently), readers should consult the excellent source book, Thomas B. Cochrane et al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, Vol. iv: Soviet Nuclear Weapons (New York: Harper and Row, 1989). For plausible estimates of gross stockpile numbers, see "Estimated Soviet Nuclear Stockpile (July 1990)," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 46, no. 6 (July/August 1990), 49. Following common usage, a first strike is an attempt to disarm an enemy. First use, in contrast, is an attempt to coerce. See US Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power: An Assessment of the Threat, 1988 (Washington, DC: US Department of Defense, 1988), pp. 59-62; and Soviet Military Power; Prospects for Change, 1989 (Washington, DC: US Department of Defense, 1989), pp. 52-53. See Bruce G. Blair, Strategic Command and Control (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1985); and the more recent study, Kurt Gottfried and Bruce G. Blair (eds.), Crisis Stability and Nuclear War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Samuel P. Huntington, "US Defense Strategy: The Strategic Innovations of the Reagan Years," in Joseph Kruzel (ed.), American Defense Annual, 1987-1988 (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987), pp. 23-43. The relationship between offense and defense is among the least well appreciated conceptual matters with which US defense professionals are obliged to grapple. See N. V. Ogarkov, Always in Readiness to Defend the Homeland, JPRS L/10412 (Washington, DC: FBIS, March 25, 1982); and Makhmut Akhmeto-

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23

24

25

26

27

28

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Colin S. Gray vich Gareev, M. V. Frunze: Military Theorist (Washington, DC: PergamonBrassey's, 1988; first pub. 1984). These works, let it be noted, were more than just "period pieces." An outstanding Western interpretation of the recent evolution in Soviet military doctrine - reflecting, inter alia, some (not the Warsaw Pact melt down) of the factors cited in the text - is William E. Odom, "Soviet Military Doctrine," Foreign Affairs, vol. 67, no. 2 (Winter 1988/89), 114-134. For speculation on this question see Condolezza Rice, "The Party, the Military, and Decision Authority in the Soviet Union," World Politics, vol. 40, no. 1 (October 1987), 55-81. Also see David Holloway and Condoleezza Rice, "The Evolution of Soviet Forces, Strategy, and Command," in Gottfried and Blair (eds.)j Crisis Stability and Nuclear War, pp. 116-158. In his Tula speech Brezhnev formally disavowed the goal of strategic superiority and argued that nuclear war could not be won. See the analysis in Benjamin S. Lambeth, "Has Soviet Nuclear Strategy Changed?" in Roman Kolkowicz (ed.), The Logic of Nuclear Terror (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987), particularly pp. 213-219. Peter Vigor, "Western Perceptions of Soviet Strategic Thought and Doctrine," in Gregory Flynn (ed.), Soviet Military Doctrine and Western Policy (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 79-105. For a comprehensive listing of the "Officer's Library" series, those available in the West and those not, see Harriet Fast Scott and William F. Scott, Soviet Military Doctrine: Continuity, Formulation, and Dissemination (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988), "Appendix D: Original Plan of the Officer's Library Series," pp. 275-277. Graham Hall Turbiville, Jr. (ed.), (compiled by Ghulam Dastagar Wardak), The Voroshilov Lectures, Materials from the Soviet General Staff Academy: Vol. i. Issues of Soviet Military Strategy (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1989). Luttwak's Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), is flawed by its resolute refusal to provide definitions of key concepts, by its elevation of a powerful insight (that war, really conflict, is pervaded by a paradoxical logic) to a status of theoretical workhorse that exceeds its capacity, and by its lack of a sure intellectual grip of both maritime and nuclear matters. For all that, the book is an outstanding achievement that deservedly will be read long after the critical reviews are forgotten. For example: Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966); Glenn Kent et al., A Calculus of First-Strike Stability, N-2526-AF (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, June 1988); and Albert Wohlstetter, "Between an Unfree World and None," Foreign Affairs, vol. 63, no. 5 (Summer 1985), 962-994. On the military-technological competition, see David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983); and Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race: How the United States and the Soviet Union Develop New Military Technologies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988). Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union (London: Weiden-

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feld and Nicolson, 1983), though seriously dated, is still crammed with valuable insight. For an example of pseudo-measurement, see Dean Wilkening et al., Strategic Defense and Crisis Stability, N-2511-AF (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, April 1989). Also see Kent, A Calculus of First-Strike Stability, for a further example from the same intellectual stable. No quality or quantity of fancy graphics can overcome the fact that strategic stability is not measurable period. See Benjamin S. Lambeth and Kevin N. Lewis, The Strategic Defense Initiative in Soviet Planning and Policy, R-355O-AF (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, January 1988). Characteristic Soviet blasts against SDI included: "Star Wars": Delusions and Dangers (Moscow: Military Publishing House, 1985); and Evgeni Velikhov et al., (eds.), Weaponry in Space: The Dilemma of Security (Moscow: Mir Publishing, 1987), chapter 4. See the contrasting views in Robert Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); and Colin S. Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Style (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Press, 1986). See Sean M. Lynn-Jones, "Lulling and Stimulating Effects of Arms Control," in Albert Carnesale and Richard N. Haass (eds.), Superpower Arms Control: Setting the Record Straight (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1987), pp. 223-273. By way of quite sharp contrast, Donnelly is right to note, even if he overstates, what he calls "an innate Russian ability to see the 'big picture' to subordinate short-term needs to long-term goals." Red Banner, p. 31. The Soviet strength in holistic approaches, whether or not it is "innately Russian," certainly is encouraged by the dialectical method of inquiry which their now practically defunct, though still (barely) authoritative state religion inherited from Nineteenth Century German philosophers. Turbiville (ed.), The Voroshilov Lectures, Vol. i, provides an excellent example of Soviet holism. "All forms of strategic action are interrelated and are conducted on the basis of a unified plan, under the control of the Supreme High Command, to achieve the general aim of the war." p. 252. William T. Lee, "Soviet Nuclear Targeting Strategy," in Ball and Richelson (eds.), Strategic Nuclear Targeting, pp. 84-108, 326-329; Notra Trulock III, "Soviet Perspectives on Limited Nuclear Warfare," in Fred S. Hoffman, Albert Wohlstetter, and Davis S. Yost (eds.), Swords and Shields: NATO, the USSR and New Choices for Long-Range Offense and Defense (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987), pp. 53-85; Edward I. Warner III, Soviet Concepts and Capabilities for Limited Nuclear War: What We Know and How We Know It, N-2769-AF (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation); Stephen Meyer, "Soviet Nuclear Operations," in Ashton B. Carter, John D. Steinbruner, and Charles A. Zraket (eds.), Managing Nuclear Operations (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1987), pp. 470-531; and Joseph D. Douglass, Jr., "Nuclear War Termination: Soviet Style," in Cimbala and Douglass (eds.), Ending a Nuclear War, pp. 19-43. Unlike Peter Vigor ("Western Perceptions"), my point at this juncture is not that these people are poor scholars, but rather that what they most seek to know is not knowable by the research means available to them (and they all have access to highly classified information).

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37 For example, Notra Trulock III, "Emerging Technologies and Future War: A Soviet View," in Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy, The Future Security Environment (Washington, DC: US Department of Defense, October, 1988), pp. 97-163. The same view pervades Albert Wohlstetter and Richard Brody, "Continuing Control as a Requirement for Deterring," in Carter, Steinbruner, and Zraket (eds.), Managing Nuclear Operations, pp. 142-196. 38 Meyer, "Soviet Nuclear Operations," p. 514. Benjamin S. Lambeth, "On Thresholds in Soviet Military Thought," The Washington Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1984), 69-76, also is highly relevant (and disturbingly plausible). 39 But, see the very careful analysis in Stephen Meyer, Soviet Theater Nuclear Forces, Part i: Development of Doctrine and Objectives, and Part n: Capabilities and Implications, Adelphi Papers nos. 187 and 188 (London: IISS, 1984). 40 See Meyer, "Soviet Nuclear Operations," p. 512. 41 See Seweryn Bialer (ed.), Stalin and His Generals: Soviet Military Memoirs of World War II (New York: Pegasus, 1969); Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad; and Albert Seaton, The Russo-German War, 1941-45 (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970). 42 Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, pp. 56-63. 43 See Sagan, Moving Targets, chapter 1; Nolan, Guardians of the Arsenal; and (with some skepticism) Desmond Ball and Robert C. Toth, "Revising the SIOP: Taking War-Fighting to Dangerous Extremes," International Security, vol. 14, no. 4 (Spring 1990), 65-92. 44 See Odom, "Soviet Military Doctrine." 45 For a book length treatment of this point, see Robin Ranger, Arms and Politics, 1958-1978: Arms Control in a Changing Political Context (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1979). 46 But see Desmond Ball, "Modern Technology and Geopolitics," in Ciro E. Zoppo and Charles Zorgbibe (eds.), On Geopolitics: Classical and Nuclear (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985), pp. 171-199; and Colin S. Gray, "Geography and Grand Strategy," in John B. Hattendorf and Malcolm H. Murfett (eds.), Limitations of Military Power (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990). 47 An excellent analysis is Donald C. F. Daniel, "The Soviet Navy and Tactical Nuclear War at Sea," Survival, vol. 29, no. 4 (July/August 1987), 318-335. 48 See Michael Brower, "Targeting Soviet Mobile Missiles: Prospects and Implications," Survival, vol. 31, no. 5 (September/October 1989), 433-445.

3

The tightening frame: mutual security and the future of strategic arms limitation Raymond L. Garthoff

Nearly fifteen years ago I published an essay under a similar title at a time when there remained doubt as to whether the Soviet leadership accepted mutual deterrence and was seriously interested in strategic arms reductions and other limitations.1 There is now less doubt as to Soviet interest in deterrence and arms limitation. Today the real questions are, first, whether Soviet "new thinking" offers a way to go beyond stabilization of mutual deterrence through strategic arms limitations toward mutual security through nuclear disarmament, and second whether the United States is ready to do so. Indeed, if a decade ago it could be asked whether the Soviet Union was prepared to join the United States in arms control, the question now is whether the United States is ready to join the Soviet Union in going beyond mere arms control. This discussion will concentrate on the changes in Soviet political, military and security thinking that now pose the challenge, rather than on the American policy response. The Soviets also see other important ideologically sanctioned uses of military force, but the basic Marxist-Leninist ideological framework predicates a fundamentally deterrent role for Soviet military power.2 The Soviets have, none the less, faced a doctrinal dilemma. While jettisoning Stalinist views on the inevitability of war and the necessary or desirable role of war as a catalyst of socialist advance in the world, as Communists they were predisposed to assume that socialism would be destined to survive and to triumph, even if a world nuclear catastrophe occurs. If they openly discarded that view, they long believed, it could place in question not only their whole world-view but also their basis for legitimacy. Hence from the late 1950s through to the mid-1980s there were occasional reaffirmations of confidence in the ultimate triumph of socialism even if a world nuclear war should, despite Soviet efforts to prevent it, occur. Such confidence was expressed in the Party Program adopted in 1961. The Soviet leaders acknowledged that general nuclear war would threaten the whole existence and future of world civilization and mankind. From the late 1960s they began to draw further conclusions from that fact, deepening Soviet interest in strategic arms limitations and reductions, and in prevention of any 57

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nuclear war. Ultimately, in the later 1980s, "new thinking" on this matter led to a new conception of requirements for security. Lenin embraced the observation of Clausewitz that "war is a continuation of policy by other means," and this indeed represents a natural Marxist-Leninist conception. Some Soviet writers, mainly but not exclusively civilians, as early as the 1960s were so impressed by the inexpediency and enormous dangers of any nuclear world war (or indeed any war which could escalate into such a war) that they seemed to challenge this view. They, in turn, were sometimes criticized and refuted by other spokesmen, mainly military. Yet the question kept arising. Why? Mainly because the two sides were not engaged in a theoretical disputation, but in a political argument with considerable potential importance for military programs and policy. In fact, both sides accepted the basic premise that war is a matter of policy or political motivation; both sides also have accepted the fact that resort to nuclear war would not be expedient as a matter of policy. The real underlying debate has been over whether war is recognized as so unpromising and dangerous that it can never occur. Such a question has profound implications for military requirements. Is a force dedicated to deterrence enough? Or, if war were to occur, despite Soviet efforts to prevent it, is a war-waging capability needed to seek a Pyrrhic "victory?" Soviet military power, and the constant enhancement of its capability and readiness, has been justified primarily for deterrence, but also to wage a defensive war if one should come despite Soviet efforts to prevent it. This view was consistently held by the Soviet military and political leaders from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. It is not accurate, as some Western commentators have done, to counterpose Soviet military interest in a "war-fighting" (and hopefully "war-winning") posture to a "deterrent" one. At least until very recently, the Soviets have seen the former capability as providing the most credible deterrent, as well as serving a contingent resort in the event of war. The emphasis, however, steadily shifted from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s toward the absolute need to prevent nuclear war, even to the extent of repeated authoritative statements by successive Soviet leaders, and military chiefs, on the unwinnability of nuclear war. It is clear from Soviet military and political discussions that acceptance of the Clausewitzian (and Leninist) conceptions of the nature and role of war is not only compatible with mutual deterrence, but reinforces its paramount feature: recognition of the necessity of avoiding and preventing general nuclear war. The most important aspect of this particular question is the unfounded contention of some prominent Western commentators, such as Professor Richard Pipes, widely cited, that "as long as the Russians persist in adhering to the Clausewitzian maxim on the function of war, mutual deterrence does not really exist." 3 On the contrary, the Soviet

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professional literature clearly shows that there is no contradiction between being "Clausewitzian" and recognizing the validity of mutual deterrence. Mutual deterrence in Soviet writings has usually been expressed in terms of assured retaliatory capability which would devastate the aggressor, because this formulation (rather than "mutual assured destruction" capability) is more responsive to ideological sensitivity over the idea that the USSR could be considered a potential aggressor and thus needs to be deterred. (Only adversaries - the United States, more broadly the imperialists, and for a time also the Chinese communists - are described as potential aggressors.) In addition, this formulation avoids identification with the specific content of the American concept of "mutual assured destruction," often expressed in terms of a countervalue capability for destroying a specified percentage of the opponent's industry and population. This US interpretation is more limited than the Soviet recognition of mutual deterrence, which rests simply on mutual capability for devastating retaliation unacceptable to a rational potential initiator of war, without calculations of arbitrary industrial and population losses that theoretically would be acceptable costs.4 Some observers have posited a possible Soviet conception of "deterrence by denial," as contrasted with the American conception of "deterrence by punishment." (Neither, of course, is a Soviet, or for that matter an official American, expression.) "Deterrence by denial" is conceived as seeking to deter by maintaining a capability for thwarting and defeating a potential attack; "deterrence by punishment" seeks to deter by relying instead on a capability for devastating punitive retaliation. Soviet force posture and "war-waging" military doctrine have suggested the possible applicability of this idea, but Soviet statements on deterrence have invariably been couched in terms of retaliatory punishment, and there is no indication that such a distinction reflects a Soviet way of thinking. The political leaders in their programmatic statements have endorsed the idea that deterrence requires strong and ready combat capability, but have never gone on to discuss meeting requirements for waging and winning a war. Brezhnev, for example, on a number of occasions stated simply: "Any potential aggressor is well aware that any attempt to launch a nuclear missile attack on our country would be met by devastating retaliation."5 In the Soviet view - shared by military and civilian leaders - just as in the mainstream of thinking in the United States in the 1970s, overall "parity" has existed for twenty years. There have been those - again, both in Moscow and in Washington, especially by the end of the 1970s - who were apprehensive as to whether this parity would be upset by some successful effort of the other side. But successive US secretaries of defense and

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chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have agreed, even when sounding such an alarm for the future (fortunately, one that seems each few years to recede to a few years hence), that "at present" there is an overall strategic parity that while each side has certain areas of superiority they balance out to yield overall deterrent parity. Parity was, of course, for the Soviet side a significant advance over the previous US unilateral superiority. Soviet political leaders from the ebullient Khrushchev of the late 1950s on had been prematurely claiming various partial superiorities and overall parity. But only in the early to mid-1970s did the Soviet military leaders admit that an assured retaliatory capability for the USSR had not come about until "the 1960s," or the late 1960s. By the late 1970s and early 1980s commentators began to acknowledge that it was only in the early 1970s that "the USSR achieved nuclear missile parity with the United States." 6 This became the standard view in the 1980s. And the Soviet military have acknowledged that while each side has certain areas of superiority, these balance out to yield an overall parity. Nevertheless, uncertainties remain in the 1990s. Maintaining mutual deterrence The Soviet leadership, like its US counterpart, has always looked in the first instance and in the final account to its own unilateral military strength as the guarantor of deterrence of the other side and, hence, of mutual deterrence. Soviet generals in the 1970s often cited a statement made by General Secretary Brezhnev in 1970: "We have created strategic forces which constitute a reliable means of deterring any aggressor. We shall respond to any and all attempts from any quarter to obtain military superiority over the USSR with a suitable increase in military strength to guarantee our defense. We cannot do otherwise." 7 This, of course, remains a postulate of Soviet defense policy - as, indeed, of parallel US policy. In both the Soviet Union and the United States, elements of the professional military leadership, especially at the outset, were somewhat skeptical of the role that arms control - especially bilateral (or multilateral) negotiated commitments to strategic arms limitations - can play in securing such deterrence. At the same time, there is good evidence that national leaderships, including senior professional military men, came increasingly in the 1970s to accept negotiated strategic arms limitations as a contributing element in providing more stable and less costly deterrent military forces. Let us recall the important discussion by General Zemskov in Military Thought in 1969. He spoke of the particular importance of the possible "disruption" of the nuclear balance in case of "the creation by one of the sides of highly effective means of anti-ballistic missile defense while the

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other side lags considerably in solution of these tasks" and that it would "increase greatly the danger of a nuclear war" if the West achieved such an advantage. 8 It is clear that this reflected a view held at the highest political and military levels, and the congruence of Soviet and American views and objectives led to the ABM Treaty signed in May 1972. Many Soviet writers have noted the effect of SALT in reflecting and supporting parity and the nuclear balance. Trofimenko expressed with particular precision the effect of the ABM Treaty on mutual deterrence, as seen by the Soviets. He described "a situation of equality of strategic capabilities of the USSR and the United States stemming from the essential equality in the balance of strategic arms (in particular, since each of the sides under any circumstances retains the capability for a retaliatory strike on the vital centers of the other)." While this situation had developed by the late 1960s, and was only implicitly codified in the SALT I agreements in late 1972, Trofimenko spoke of "the equalizing of capabilities of the USSR and the US for a retaliatory strike (in particular as a result of the prohibition on the creation of nation-wide ABM systems through the 1972 Treaty)," 9 and further "By relinquishing deployment of nation-wide ABM systems, the two sides eliminated one of the main motivating stimuli to the further build-up of efforts in the field of offensive systems." 10 This recognition of the key significance of the ABM Treaty in "preventing the emergence of a chain reaction of competition between offensive and defensive arms" was specifically cited by Marshal Grechko, then Minister of Defense, and General of the Army (now Marshal) Kulikov, then Chief of the General Staff, in 1972 in endorsing the treaty when it was formally considered by the Supreme Soviet in the ratification process. 11 Aleksandr Bovin, following the signing of the SALT II treaty in 1979, similarly commented on the contribution of the SALT I ABM treaty. 12 We should recall the second element in General Zemskov's analysis in 1969. In addition to noting the possibility of the disruption of the nuclear balance if one side obtained an effective ABM capability and the other did not, he also had noted such a danger "in case of a further sharp increase of nuclear [strike] potential" by one side. 13 Specifically, the great threat seen in the 1970s was MIRV. General Cherednichenko spelled it out in another article in Military Thought in 1974, referring to the so-called "Schlesinger Doctrine." He stated that while the counterforce conception was not new in American military thinking, in the 1960s a disarming strike had not been a real possibility, but with MIRV a disarming strike could be envisaged. And as he saw it, "the new US nuclear strategy is focused on a preventive preemptive strike. It is of a patently aggressive character and aims at increasing the possibilities for initiating a nuclear world war." 14 This is the

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danger Soviet military planners have seen in the qualitative and quantitative superiority of the United States in MIRVed systems throughout the 1970s, and in other new offensive systems in the 1980s, especially coupled with prospective new strategic defensive spaced-based systems in the 1990s or beyond. The main concern of the Soviet leadership is US political-military strategic intention. They have also been concerned over growing US counterforce capabilities and parallel US advocacy of counterforce concepts, both because of threatened destabilization of the existing balance and because of what they suspect as to the underlying US intentions. Dr. Trofimenko, for example, concludes that the "genuine parity" reflected and bolstered by the SALT ABM treaty "does not suit American theoreticians." He has argued that: The true nature of American strategic missile targeting is a most important state secret, and the American command can target its missiles in any way it wishes without speaking out publicly about it. Hence the public campaign of the Pentagon connected with the advertised "retargeting" [of the Schlesinger Doctrine] is . . . a conscious effort to put psychological pressure on the other side.15 The reversal of US stated policy on the destabilizing nature of counterforce capabilities and the open pursuit of such capabilities after 1974 considerably raised Soviet suspicions, especially because it initially accompanied the failure in the latter half of the 1970s to reach a SALT agreement based on the Vladivostok accords. In the Soviet perception, the United States continued, notwithstanding SALT and detente, to seek military superiority even in the 1970s, and more openly in the 1980s. Although some highly placed US leaders and others are considered to have "soberly" evaluated the strategic situation and given up pursuit of supremacy in the 1970s, powerful forces are believed to have continued to seek advantage and superiority in order to compel Soviet acquiescence in US policy preferences. Moreover, actual American military policy and programs have been seen as seeking to upset or to circumvent the nuclear mutual deterrence balance. American counterforce capabilities developed and deployed since the mid-1970s constitute a powerful threat to the overall Soviet ICBM force, bomber force and submarine force (particularly since the latter two are not kept on the same degree of airfield alert or deployment at sea as are their US counterparts). While Americans have focused on growing Minuteman vulnerability, the Soviets recognize that ICBMs are less than one fourth of the US strategic force, and it is far more ominous for the Soviet side that its ICBM force has become increasingly vulnerable, because far more Soviet strategic eggs are in the fixed land-based ICBM force basket - nearly

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70 percent of their total strategic warheads. Also, as noted above, other Soviet intercontinental forces are less numerous, less capable and even more vulnerable. Given the concerns in the United States over the Soviet threat to US ICBMs, it is no wonder that conservative Soviet military planners and responsive political leaders would be concerned over existing and growing US capabilities. From the vantage-point of Moscow, while a general nuclear balance had come into being by the beginning of the 1970s, and parity was recognized in the SALT accords and consolidated by Soviet military modernization programs of the 1970s, major continuing Soviet efforts were needed to keep up the balance. We in the United States are accustomed to regarding the later 1970s as a time of a "relentless Soviet military buildup," and of American relaxation in military programs - in the eyes of the Reagan Administration a decade of neglect and passivity. Yet, in fact, the United States added more strategic warheads to its force during the decade of the 1970s, the decade of detente and SALT, than did the Soviet Union. Moreover, we now know that while catching up with the United States by deploying its own MIRVed missiles the Soviet Union was cutting back in the pace of its overall military procurement. In 1976, the Soviet leadership made a decision of considerable importance: to reduce military spending from an annual rate of increase of four to five percent to about two percent, and to level off the procurement of military weapons and equipment. Paradoxically, just as this policy began to be implemented in 1976-77 the United States began to publicize a campaign decrying a spending gap, and depicting an allegedly undiminished Soviet rate of military spending as evidence of a relentless Soviet military buildup despite detente and SALT. 16 Regrettably, United States intelligence estimators did not detect and establish this Soviet cutback until 1982-83 - but to the Soviets it appeared that the United States was using a false charge of a growing Soviet military buildup that began in the late 1970s and burgeoned in the 1980s.17 The Soviet perspective, while no doubt biased, is more readily understood against this background. It should be emphasized that measuring a military balance and parity is a far more subjective matter than most people realize. Moreover, adversaries are bound not only to see the balance differently, but to resolve uncertainties in favor of the other side in the interests of prudence - and then, often, to use such "worst case" estimates not only for hedging in setting their own military requirements, but also to infer the adversaries' intentions as well as capabilities from such weighted estimates. 18 And Soviet and American military and political leaders have seen the military balance very differently - each side tends to look at the balance as if through the two ends of a telescope, at the adversary's capabilities through a magnifying lens and

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then at one's own forces through the minifying reverse lens. Moreover, different historical, cultural-ideological, geopolitical and other filters importantly affect judgments. This occurred on both sides in the last half of the 1970s with respect to buildup and capabilities, and in the first half of the 1980s also with respect to intentions. 19 The process of "hedging" on parity by seeking a margin of insurance is occasionally recognized by Soviet commentators, but without much sympathy and without admitting that it affects their own defense programming. Indeed, it is usually dismissed as a US pretext for seeking superiority. 20 But it does tend to influence military force planning in both countries. There is, in addition, a strong temptation more or less consciously to manipulate "the threat" by the other side to justify one's own military programs. This also has been only too evident on both sides in this period, especially in the 1980s. Thus, from their perspective Soviet leaders and military and political commentators since the late 1970s have perceived the leaders of the United States to be following a "course directed at overthrowing the existing approximate balance of forces between the USSR and the United States and at achieving American military superiority." 21 The Central Committee in June 1980 charged that the United States was seeking to upset "the existing strategic balance in the world," and reaffirmed the need for strengthened Soviet defense capability "to defeat imperialist plans to attain military superiority." 22 Many Soviet commentators referred to the alleged US attempt "to destabilize global strategic parity in its own favor," and failure to recognize that "security in the age of nuclear parity is based on stability, and stability is based on the mutual acknowledgement of equality and on abandoning the aspiration for superiority." 23 Beginning in 1980-81, Soviet military men began to become increasingly concerned as the United States buildup became large and sustained. Yet successive Soviet leaderships under Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev, while vowing to maintain parity and continuing Soviet strategic modernization programs, did not accept plans for a comparable Soviet buildup. Military leaders, and other Soviet leaders and commentators, have displayed considerable suspicion of US intentions, and concern not only over growing US capabilities, but also as to why this continued increase in capabilities is sought. To be sure, some of these expressions of concern doubtless serve other purposes, such as argument to support requested Soviet military programs. But many have the ring of sincerity about them and many cite incontrovertible evidence to support their arguments on capabilities, as well as "evidence" which to the Soviets seem to be convincing signs of nefarious US objectives and intentions. 24 During the first Reagan Administration the sustained American military

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buildup stilled any doubts in Moscow that there was a major United States effort to regain strategic superiority. While seeing the Reagan Administration's military program as essentially continuing and building on those of its predecessor, Soviet observers saw radical change in two other respects, changes that imparted a still more ominous cast to the whole direction of US military strategy. The first significant new departure was the attitude toward strategic arms limitation. The second significant new departure of the Reagan Administration was the president's flamboyant advocacy of a strategic defense initiative (SDI), as it came to be called officially, better known (and termed in most Soviet commentary) as "Star Wars." The Star Wars initiative directly challenged the whole rationale of the ABM Treaty banning a ballistic missile defense of the territories of the two countries. Thus, the real American objective was perceived as a defensive shield to augment a strengthened sword and permit use politically, or even militarily, of a coercive first strike capability.25 This aim seemed strengthened in later months and years as US spokesmen increasingly shied away from the idea that the SDI could replace a nuclear offensive deterrent, as Reagan had suggested, and claimed instead it would supplement offensive forces and strengthen deterrence (interpreted by the Soviets to mean coercion). Space weapons, seen as a principal element in the SDI, have come to be suspected of development also as offensive arms, "space strike weapons." Thus, for example, Marshal Akhromeyev, then first deputy Minister of Defense and Chief of the General Staff, wrote that: "Reagan's so-called 'Strategic Defense Initiative,' which envisages the creation of a large-scale ABM defense system and, most important, the deployment of strike weapons in space, also pursues aggressive aims. The main purpose of this program is perfectly clear: to make possible a sudden nuclear attack on the Soviet Union with minimal risk to the United States." 26 Then Defense Minister Marshal Sergei Sokolov similarly declared in 1985 that "From the military view-point, the American 'Star Wars' plan is an integral part of US nuclear strategy, a.first-strike strategy." 27 The Soviet military, as well as political, leaders see the Star Wars program as a US attempt to capitalize on technological superiorities in seeking a military superiority in order to gain political dominance. Even if doomed to failure (and the Soviets may not be quite so certain of this outcome as they say), it would at least disrupt the offensive - defensive connection stability by the ABM Treaty. Again, Marshal Sokolov stressed that "the creation by one of the sides of a large-scale ABM system will break this interconnection ['that objectively exists between offensive and defensive arms'], will destabilize the strategic situation, and will require the other side to reestablish the situation either by building up its strategic

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offensive arms, or supplementing them with antiballistic missile systems, or most likely both." 28 The SDI is also seen as both undermining the existing ABM Treaty, and precluding further steps in strategic offensive arms limitations. As General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev put it: "The creation of space weapons can have only one result: the arms race will become even more intensive and will embrace new spheres." 29 Indeed, Soviet commentators not only see an intensification of the arms race as the inescapable result of the SDI, but also as part of at least its initial purpose: "The real purpose behind Reagan's space fantasies is to pave the way for renouncing existing accords and whipping up the arms race in all kinds of strategic weapons, offensive and defensive." 30 Finally, complementing and supporting both the American abandonment of serious arms control, and the intention to escape the constraints of the ABM Treaty, was an escalation of charges of Soviet noncompliance with the ABM Treaty, SALT II, and other arms control agreements. The Soviet leaders explicitly tied these military developments to the aims of the Reagan Administration to mount a "crusade" against Soviet socialism, and "to destroy socialism as a social-political system." 31 Thus in addition to intensifying military competition, and making arms control impossible, the US Star Wars program has been seen as reflecting and intensifying political confrontation. By coincidence the resumption of arms negotiations occurred just as Gorbachev became the Soviet leader. Initially, for the first year, only minor steps were taken by either side - the United States was not really prepared to negotiate any constraints on strategic defenses and space weapons, and the Soviet Union was not prepared to move on strategic arms reductions in the absence of such constraints. Even the restoration of highest-level contact in the summit meeting of President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev at Geneva in November 1985 only produced another papering over of that basic divergence, rather than a step toward its resolution. On January 15,1986, Gorbachev unilaterally proposed a plan for gradual staged elimination of all nuclear weapons in fifteen years, by the end of the century. 32 While widely regarded at the time as primarily a propaganda initiative, it provided a framework for partial agreements, and directly contributed to the later INF Treaty, the proposed 50 percent reduction in strategic arms, and the new readiness for on-site inspection that made that progress possible.33 The Reykjavik summit in October 1986 represented a spectacular failure in an over-ambitious attempt to reach a very far-reaching reduction of nuclear arms, caused by an impasse over the question of strategic defense and space weapons. None the less, there was real progress in negotiation of

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many elements for a 50 percent strategic arms reduction agreement, and toward the eventual INF Treaty. In December 1987 the INF Treaty was signed, and in May 1988 ratified, while negotiation continued on a 50 percent reduction in strategic arms. Meanwhile, attention increasingly turned toward forthcoming talks on conventional arms in Europe. This was given an impetus by a major unilateral reduction, including six forward-deployed Soviet tank divisions in Central Europe, announced by Gorbachev in a speech to the UN General Assembly in December 1988.34 Arms control and reductions, an uncertain prospect in 1980-81, and indeed until 1986-87, became a growing concern. To be sure, there remains serious technical difficulties over verification of some measures, but not because of political reticence. There also remain important differences over evaluations of requirements for deterrence and stability based on the differing geostrategic perspectives of the two sides. The questions of continued commitment to the ABM Treaty and to the strategic design it embodies remain. But Soviet interest in strategic arms limitations and reductions is not an issue. Mutual deterrence, despite differences over the respective weight to be accorded to unilateral defense or negotiated reduction, is accepted by both sides. There has, however, been an interesting and significant transformation underway on the Soviet side. From mutual deterrence toward mutual security As early as the mid-1970s, arguments began to appear in some Soviet writings on the need to go beyond codification of a nuclear balance on the basis of parity at the very high levels currently existing. A writer in Pravda in 1976 argued: "Trying to justify the arms race, certain political circles in Western countries propagandize some sort of balance of terror which is supposedly necessary to maintain peace and to ensure the security of peoples. But such a balance is an unreliable foundation for security. The real way to achieve security is to observe the principle of the non-use of force."35 These commentators did not oppose a nuclear balance based on parity from the standpoint of seeking superiority, but rather argued for a need to go beyond it to disarmament.36 Soviet objections to the "balance of terror" and indefinite reliance on mutual deterrence extend beyond concerns and continuing risks of possible resort to nuclear warfare or accidental occurrence precipitating nuclear war. "The conception of preserving peace on the basis of an 'equilibrium of fear' or 'balance of terror' occupies an important place in the arsenal of the enemies of disarmament."37 The concept of the "balance of terror" and

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mutual deterrence is, it is argued, used by Western opponents of detente and disarmament to legitimize the arms race. 38 Nevertheless, Soviet critics note that while the "balance of terror" is an uneasy peace owing to the tension engendered by being under a nuclear sword of Damocles, and much less satisfactory than one marked by trust and disarmament, still "such a balance is peace." 39 Thus, the Soviet position has been to accept that "nuclear missile parity is a condition contributing to the success of a policy of peace," and that detente in the 1970s reflected the strategic nuclear balance of parity, while advocating steps beyond that situation toward greater cooperation and disarmament. 40 By the time of the 26th Party Congress in 1981, Brezhnev declared that "to count on victory in a nuclear war is dangerous madness." 41 A few months later he repeated that statement, and added that "only he who has decided to commit suicide can start a nuclear war in the hope of emerging a victor. No matter what strength an attacker possesses, no matter what method of unleashing war he chooses, he will not attain his aims. Retribution will inevitably ensue." 42 Party leaders Andropov and Chernenko made similar statements in major party pronouncements on Lenin's anniversary, and Chernenko stressed that it would be "criminal" to view nuclear war as a "rational, almost 'legitimate' continuation of policy." 43 At the Geneva Summit meeting of President Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, it was reportedly Gorbachev who took the initiative in proposing inclusion in the joint statement that the two sides "agreed that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought," as well as reaffirming that they would "not seek to achieve military superiority." 44 By the mid-1980s even Soviet military spokesmen were saying that today "what is at issue is no longer victory or defeat, but annihilation or existence." Lieutenant General Dmitri Volkogonov, then deputy chief of the Main Political Administration and a well-known military theorist, made that statement in 1985 in a major article on "War and Peace in the 'Nuclear Age'" on the seventieth anniversary of Lenin's principal military writing, "Socialism and War." 45 He reaffirmed as valid today Lenin's Clausewitzian definition of war as the continuation of policy by violent means, but went on to stress that "it is becoming increasingly obvious that a nuclear war can no longer be used by an aggressor as a means for resolving political tasks." He cited Brezhnev's 26th Congress statement that "counting on victory in a nuclear war is dangerous madness," and as noted above went beyond to question even the concept of "victory" for anyone. He also repeated the judgment that "The arms buildup above a certain level ceases to play a decisive military role." As he put it, "Indeed, life on earth can be annihilated only once, not twice or three times over." And he cited a

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statement attributed to Lenin that the militarization of science and technology can undermine "the very conditions of the existence of human society," which he depicted as displaying striking sagacity. No matter how one interprets this or other statements by Lenin, what is significant is the ideological basis being provided to support the current Soviet view and to discourage any challenges to it. Deterrence is the underlying military policy, and "the only objective material basis for deterrence of war today is the capability of socialism to maintain strategic parity in nuclear means." General Volkogonov emphasized, as do all Soviet writers, the existence of a "prevailing approximate parity in strategic nuclear forces" as depriving the imperialists of any realistic hope for achieving victory and thus deterring war and preserving the peace. Far from seeing this as a transient development, he drew from it a far-reaching theoretical proposition: "Essentially, this dialectical interconnection between a balance of strategic forces and attainment of international security emerges as one of the laws governing the preservation of peace in the world." But while deterrence is seen as the necessary bedrock, Volkogonov also stressed that "the dominating imperative of 'the nuclear age' is that real security lies not in the search for ways to achieve victory in war, but in the ability to prevent a nuclear cataclysm." 46 This discussion is indicative of the trend in Soviet military and political thinking by the mid-1980s.47 This general approach had received authoritative advocacy from successive Soviet political leaders. Gorbachev, however, appears to have carried this line of thinking further. Gorbachev and the "new thinking" on security By the time of the 27th Party Congress in 1986, Gorbachev not only spoke of "the complete unacceptability of nuclear war," but also of the insufficiency for security of defense or deterrence in the nuclear age. "The character of contemporary weapons," he said, "does not permit any state hope of defending itself by military-technical means alone, even by creating the most powerful defense." 48 While accepting the reality of mutual deterrence "when the whole world has become a nuclear hostage," he argued that "security cannot indefinitely be built on fear of retaliation, that is on doctrines of 'deterrence' or 'intimidation.'" Moreover, "these doctrines [deterrence] encourage the arms race, which sooner or later can get out of control." Rather, "Ensuring security more and more becomes a political task and can only be solved by political means. Above all, the will is needed to take the path of disarmament." 49 And "it is more than time to begin a practical withdrawal from balancing on the brink of war, from a

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balance of terror, to normal civilized forms of mutual relations between states of the two systems." 50 By this time the Soviet leadership had established the maintenance of strategic parity with the United States as a foundation for stability, deterrence, arms control, and security, and endorsed all these aims. An article in May 1986 in the authoritative journal Kommunist is worth citing at some length: Life has so developed that both of our countries must proceed from the fact that strategic parity is a natural condition. Without a military-strategic balance the maintenance of international stability is unthinkable. Without it it would hardly have been possible to conclude a number of treaties and agreements on the limitation of the arms race. An approximate equivalence of forces must be accepted as a foundation for international security, as a self-evident imperative. But for this new thinking, it is necessary to understand that for reliable defense today a considerably reduced number of arms is sufficient. Indeed, and this is obvious to everyone, the present level of the balance of nuclear potentials of the two sides is much too high. For the present this ensures both sides with equal danger. But only for the time being. A continuation of the arms race will inevitably increase this equal danger and it could lead to such extremes that even parity would cease to be a military-political deterrent.51 Similarly, the new Party Program adopted at the 27th Party Congress in 1986 described "The establishment of military-strategic parity between the USSR and the United States and the Warsaw Pact and NATO" not only as "a historic achievement of socialism," but also argued that the preservation of parity is "an important factor for safeguarding peace and international security." 52 It is difficult to overstate the importance of strategic parity in Soviet thinking. For example, a leading Soviet academician described as an "epic of the twentieth century," ranking along with the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet victory in World War II, "the achievement of militarystrategic parity with the strongest and most mighty capitalist power, the United States, permitting mankind to keep peace on earth and to save civilization from a nuclear missile catastrophe." 53 Yet parity itself, as traditionally conceived, has come under challenge by the new thinking. In delivering the Political Report of the Central Committee to the Party Congress, Gorbachev introduced the concept of "reasonable sufficiency" as a criterion in determining military requirements. 54 He did not spell out how reasonable sufficiency itself would be determined, and encouraged an open discussion of the issue. The military soon began to stress that the foundation for reasonable sufficiency was maintaining strategic parity. 55 General of the Army Dmitri Yazov, minister of defense, emphatically expressed the continuing view that "Military

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strategic parity remains the decisive factor in preventing war at the present time," that is, serves as the key to deterrence of war. 56 Debate, indirectly expressed, none the less continued on whether "parity" meant quantitative equality in strategic forces, or qualitative equality in the ability to deliver a retaliatory strike - that is, a parity in deterrent capability. While the minority of civilian commentators who came close to espousing a doctrine of minimum deterrence with inferior forces has not prevailed in the debate, the idea of qualitative rather than quantitative parity has. Thus even a relatively conservative military writer by 1989 accepted the idea that the traditional quantitative approach must be replaced by a qualitative one based on "reasonable sufficiency for defense," although "the measure of reasonable sufficiency is defined not only by us but also by the other side's actions." Most important, however, is the recognition that parity is defined in mutual deterrent capabilities. The new approach "requires that parity be regarded as a correlation of the two sides' strategic potential that provides capability to inflict unacceptable damage on the aggressor in a retaliatory strike." 57 This acceptance of a retaliatory deterrent capability as the essence of parity has also been reflected in confidential internal military discussions. For example, in 1988 this approach was made crystal clear in a discussion in the General Staff journal Military Thought: "Military strategic parity between the USSR and the USA, and between the WTO and NATO, has decisive significance for deterrence of aggression and prevention of war. Maintaining military-strategic parity doesn't mean an absolute equality of forces, but requires capabilities for assured dealing of an unstoppable retaliatory strike." 58 The acceptance by the military of mutual assured destruction capability as the foundation for parity and reasonable sufficiency of strategic forces underlies military support for Gorbachev's efforts to reduce strategic nuclear weapons (and indeed all nuclear weapons) on both sides to the fullest extent negotiable. The new thinking also calls for going beyond mutual deterrence to mutual security. Again, the basis for a new approach was provided by Gorbachev's earlier cited declaration at the Party Congress that "security cannot indefinitely be built on . . . doctrines of'deterrence'...," but "more and more becomes a political task," based on recognition that "security can only be mutual" or general. 59 How do the Soviets envisage mutual security serving as a replacement for mutual deterrence? While various Soviet writers have stressed different aspects of this matter, the overall conception that has been emerging has four elements: strategic stability, national interests of the parties, increased reliance on international institutions, and increased trust. These are

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mutually reinforcing elements, and movement in each can have a synergistic effect on the others. A military balance, and strategic parity in a qualitative deterrent sense, retains an important, and at least initially crucial, role. As Colonel Strebkov has put it, "a qualitative approach to parity requires the creation of an integral system of strategic stability on the basis of military equilibrium." As the military factor diminishes in importance, "as parity falls to lower and lower levels, on the basis of reasonable sufficiency for defense and a balance of interests, there will be a corresponding increase in stability in relations between the USSR and the United States and the Warsaw Pact and NATO as a whole. A policy of strength will give way to political and legal means of settling problems that arise." 60 Stressing the role of reliance on reasonable sufficiency in reducing mutual threat perceptions and thereby lowering tension, Soviet analysts have begun to emphasize the need to accommodate the national interests of the sides. "Reasonable sufficiency," they note, "presupposes that in order to prevent aggression it is necessary not only to balance forces, and to evaluate the hypothetical capabilities of the other side, but above all to restrain its leadership from unleashing war, by taking into account its real intentions, and most important its interests." 61 The combination of reciprocally reducing and restructuring military forces in accordance with reasonable sufficiency, and political measures based on mutual accommodation of national interests, would thus become "the shaping of a new model for ensuring security not by means of mutual deterrence but by the creation of an atmosphere of mutual trust." 62 Finally, as a concomitant to this diminished military capability and diminished perception of a threat, with increased mutual trust and accommodation, the very role of deterrence will be increasingly assumed by the changing world order and "the role of deterrence in the new world order will no doubt have to be played by political and legal instruments. An important role must be played by international law and international institutions." 63 The increased attention being given by the Soviet Union to international institutions, including the resolution of regional conflicts, is relevant in this connection. The role of strategic arms limitations and reductions in helping to secure parity at even lower levels is obvious. As with other aspects of the changing Soviet military doctrine, some things can be done unilaterally but much can only be done reciprocally by tacit agreement or more likely by formal negotiated accords. Gorbachev's dramatic proposal on January 15, 1986, for elimination of all nuclear weapons by the end of this century was perhaps too dramatic, too theatrical. But at Reykjavik in August it became clear that the Soviet Union was prepared to agree on eliminating all nuclear

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weapons. And as less far-reaching interim steps, the Soviets proposed reductions of 50 percent, and soon thereafter agreed to a separate "zero option" elimination of intermediate and lesser range missiles. Parallel with these developments, General Kozlov, former first deputy chief of the General Staff, wrote in the confidential journal Military Thought, not for a public audience, that both parity and mutual deterrence while necessary for the present were not the Soviet preferred state of affairs. The Soviet Union, he stated, "considers military-strategic parity only as a definite frontier beyond which it is necessary to move to achieve a reduction, and ultimately even a complete elimination, of the threat of nuclear war." "Our country," he continued, "is doing everything possible to get out of the situation of 'mutual assured destruction.5 The aim of the policy of the USSR is to exclude nuclear weapons from the arsenals of states and in the final account their complete elimination." 64 In the meantime, the Soviet Union is also moving to change its military objective not only in terms of parity at reduced levels, a defensive and strategic doctrine, and reducing and restructuring elements of their force posture that appear especially threatening to the West (and to China), but also is designing its strategic concept to facilitate conflict termination, rather than victory, as the operative objective in case hostilities were to occur. That, however, is a subject beyond the scope of this discussion. Conclusion Soviet acceptance of parity and mutual deterrence, renunciation of the goal of superiority, and positive interest in negotiated strategic arms limitations and reductions are now much clearer than they were when SALT began more than twenty years ago. Those American commentators who long argued that the Soviets, and in particular the Soviet military, reject mutual deterrence, and who have therefore questioned the basis for mutually useful strategic arms limitations, were evidently not sufficiently aware of the record. Allegations that Soviet statements on mutual deterrence and the unacceptability of general nuclear war were "for export," and contrasting them with selected Soviet military statements on war-waging doctrine, have been either misconceived or mischievous. Authoritative statements of successive Soviet political leaders on such occasions as Party Congresses, and by Soviet military leaders, and finally the evidence from such sources as the confidential USSR Ministry of Defense organ Military Thought, dispel such erroneous assumptions. The record as well as the rhetoric indicates that the Soviet political and military leadership accepts a strategic nuclear balance and parity between

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the USSR and the United States not only as a fact, but as the realistic prospect for the foreseeable future, until it can gradually be superseded by an evolving new world order. They are pursuing extensive military programs to ensure that they do not fail to maintain their side of the balance, which they see as in some jeopardy given US programs, especially the SDL But there is reason to credit their statements that they seek to stabilize and to maintain parity and mutual deterrence at the lowest possible level, and that they desire balanced and verified strategic arms reductions. Moreover, the Soviets are now seeking ways to move from reliance on mutual deterrence to greater reliance on mutual security. Recognition by the Gorbachev regime of the economic problems of the country add powerfully to other incentives to reach agreed arms limitations and major reductions. Finally, it is simply not the case that such avowed Soviet objectives are inconsistent with Soviet military doctrine or with communist ideology. In Marxist-Leninist eyes, military power is not and should not be the driving element in world politics. With "imperialist" military power held in check, the decisive social-economic forces of history, they believe, would determine the future of the world. Surely we can be no less confident in letting history decide. Nuclear war is the one threat to any ideological goal. The intensified efforts of both sides in the late 1970s and much of the 1980s to rely more upon unilateral military programs than on negotiated constraints to secure deterrence compounded the difficulty of a serious negotiation of strategic arms limitations and reductions. So does the inexorable march of military technology. None the less, that process is again underway and the INF Treaty is a solid, if modest, step. A START agreement building on the negotiation since Reykjavik would be an appropriate next step. Negotiating agreed constraints, while the best way to support parity and mutual deterrence, is not easy. Still more difficult is a process of building sufficient trust to move gradually toward mutual security based on minimal deterrent capabilities or even supplanting them altogether. Yet that is now the avowed Soviet aim, and one that we too should consider seriously in determining how best our own security can be served. Notes 1 Raymond L. Garthoff, "Mutual Deterrence and Strategic Arms Limitation in Soviet Policy," International Security, vol. 3, no. 1 (Summer 1978), 112-147. 2 In addition to the very summary discussion in these paragraphs, see Raymond L. Garthoff, Soviet Military Policy: A Historical Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1966), chapters 1, 4, 10 and 12.

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3 Richard Pipes, "Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War," Commentary, vol. 72, no. 7 (July 1977), 34. 4 This distinction of the US and Soviet formulations of mutual deterrence was expressed in this way in my earlier article (International Security, Summer 1978, p. 124), with no specific Soviet source references. Five years later, a Soviet analyst used almost exactly the same terms to describe the US and Soviet conceptions: "Then, as now, both sides in the nuclear confrontation possessed an assumed capability to inflict an annihilating retaliatory strike on an aggressor (the Soviet formulation), or to inflict 'unacceptable damage' on the attacker as long as the situation of 'mutual assured destruction' exists (the American formulation)." See G. Gerasimov, "Current Problems of World Politics," Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnyye otnosheniya [The World Economy and International Relations], no. 7 (July 1983), 99. The parenthetical identifications of Soviet and American formulations are Gerasimov's. Some Soviet accounts in discussing American policy debates endorse "mutual assured destruction" as a "positive, constructive" conception underlying mutual deterrence, and explicitly endorse "the principle of 'the mutual vulnerability of the sides,' which underlies the existing Soviet-American disarmament agreements." See "The Establishment of the Military-Political Strategy of the Reagan Administration," SShA (USA), no. 5 (May 1982), 125, and no. 6 (June 1982), 118-19. 5 L. I. Brezhnev, in Materialy xxiv s'yezda KPSS (Materials of the 24th Congress of the CPSU) (Moscow: Politizdat, 1971), p. 81. 6 See Kortunov, Kommunist, no. 10 (1980), 99. 7 L. I. Brezhnev, Leninskim kursom [A Leninist Course], vol. 3 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1970), p. 541. 8 Zemskov, Voyennaya mysV, no. 5 (1969), 59. 9 Trofimenko, SShA: Politika, voina, ideologiya, pp. 317, 318. 10 Trofimenko, SShA: Politika, voina, ideologiya, pp. 324-25. 11 The quotation is from General of the Army Viktor G. Kulikov, cited in Izvestiya, August 24, 1972; a similar statement by Marshal Andrei A. Grechko appears in Pravda, September 30, 1972. 12 A. Bovin, "Internationalism and Coexistence," Novoye vremya [New Times], no. 30 (July 1973). 13 Zemskov, Voyennaya mysV, no. 5 (1969), 59. 14 Maj. Gen. M. Cherednichenko, "The Evolution of Views on the Content and Functions of Military Strategy," Voyennaya mysV, no. 12 (December 1974), 23-24. 15 Trofimenko, SShA: Politika, voina, ideologiya, p. 319. 16 See Raymond L. Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation, pp. 794-96. 17 Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation, pp. 795 and 800. 18 See Raymond L. Garthoff, "Worst-Case Assumptions: Uses, Abuses and Consequences," in Gwyn Prins (ed.), The Nuclear Crisis Reader (New York, NY: Vintage/Random House, 1984), pp. 98-108. 19 For a more comprehensive discussion of the problem of determining a military strategic balance, and of conflicting Soviet and American viewpoints, see Raymond L. Garthoff, Perspectives on the Strategic Balance (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1983), and for further discussion of diverging American

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Raymond L. Garthoff and Soviet military thinking and views of the strategic balance, see Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation, pp. 768-800. V. Nekrasov, "An Absurd but Dangerous Myth," Kommunist, no. 12 (August 1979), 98. Editorial, "On the US President's State of the Union Message," Pravda, January 29, 1980. In this connection it cited the president's statement that the United States should be prepared to pay any price that may be required to remain "the strongest country in the world." Kommunist, no. 10 (July 1980), 8 and 10. Vladimir B. Lomeyko, "International Observers Roundtable," Radio Moscow, Domestic Service, February 10, 1980. For a comprehensive analysis of Soviet perceptions of American military policy and doctrine, see Raymond L. Garthoff, "Soviet Perceptions of Western Strategic Thought and Doctrine," in Soviet Military Doctrine and Western Policy (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 197-309. The paragraphs following draw upon that analysis. The most authoritative and complete Soviet analysis has been a report prepared by a distinguished group of Soviet scientists led by R. A. Sagdeyev, Director of the Institute of Space Research, and A. A. Kokoshin, a deputy director of the Institute of USA and Canada, under the auspices of the Committee of Soviet Scientists for Defense of Peace and Against Nuclear War. The report is titled: Strategicheskiye i mezhdunarodno-politicheskiye posledstviya sozdaniya kosmicheskoi protivoraketnoi sistemy s ispol'sovaniyam oruzhiya napravlennoi peredachi energii [Strategic and International-Political Consequences of the Creation of a Space-based Antiballistic Missile System Using Directed Energy Weapons] (Moscow: Institute kosmicheskikh issledovanii Akademiya Nauk, 1984, 42 pp.). This interpretation had been given authoritatively by General Secretary Yury Andropov only a few days after the Star Wars speech; see "Replies of Yu. V. Andropov to Questions from a Correspondent of Pravda," Pravda, March 27, 1983. Marshal S. Akhromeyev, "A Great Victory and Its Lessons," Izvestiya, May 7, 1985. "Replies of Marshal of the Soviet Union S. L. Sokolov, Minister of Defense of the USSR to Questions of a TASS Correspondent," Krasnaya zvezda, May 5, 1985. Ibid. "Interview of M. S. Gorbachev with the Editor of Pravda," Pravda, April 8, 1985. A. Bovin, "Fantasies and Reality," Izvestiya, April 21, 1985. See Marshal S. L. Sokolov, "Great Victory: Conclusions and Lessons," Kommunist, no. 6 (April 1985), 64-65; and Marshal S. Akhromeyev, Izvestiya, May 7, 1985. The Star Wars speech of March 1983 had followed closely after the most direct political challenge by Reagan to the legitimacy of Soviet rule, a speech in which he declared the Soviet leaders to be "the focus of evil in the world," and the Soviet Union "an evil empire." And in a third speech a week later, nominally addressed to arms control, the president attacked what he called a "relentless military buildup" by the Soviet Union, and called for "peace through [American

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military] strength," rather than arms control. See President Reagan, "National Security, Address to the Nation," March 23, 1983, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, no. 19 (March 28, 1983), 4 4 2 ^ 8 ; "Remarks at the Annual Convention [of the National Association of Evangelicals] in Orlando, Florida, March 8, 1983," Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, no. 19 (March 14,1983), 369; and "Remarks to the Los Angeles World Affairs, March 31, 1983, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, no. 19 (April 4, 1983), 484. 32 Gorbachev, Pravda, January 16, 1986. 33 See Raymond L. Garthoff, "The Gorbachev Proposal and Prospects for Arms Control," Arms Control Today, vol. 16, no. 1 (January-February 1986), 3-6. 34 Gorbachev, Pravda, December 8, 1988. 35 V. Larin, "A Topical Proposal," Pravda, October 27, 1976; see also A. Bovin, Radio Moscow, June 19, 1979; B. Andrianov and V. Nekrasov, Radio Moscow, June 18, 1979; G. Shakhnazarov, "The Arms Race Is a Danger to the Peoples," Krasnaya zvezda, June 14, 1979; and Dr. [Colonel] V. Kulish, "A Balance of Trust and not a Balance of Terror," Novoye vremya, no. 22 (May 1979), 4—6. 36 Kulish, "A Balance of Trust." 37 N. I. Lebedev and S. V. Kortunov, "The Problem of Disarmament and the Ideological Struggle - A Critique of the Apologists for the Arms Race," Novaya i noveishaya istoriya [Modern and Contemporary History], no. 4 (July-August 1980), 8-9. 38 Lebedev and Kortunov, "Problem of Disarmament"; and see Milovidov and Zhadanov, Voprosyfilosofii,no. 10 (1980), 49. 39 Bovin, Kommunist, no. 10 (1980), 78. 40 Bovin, Kommunist, no. 10 (1980), 78; and see the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU, June 23, 1980, text in Kommunist, no. 10 (July 1980), 8-10. 41 L. Brezhnev, Pravda, February 24, 1981. 42 L. Brezhnev, Pravda, October 21, 1981. 43 K. U. Chernenko, Pravda, April 23, 1981; and see Yu. V. Andropov, Pravda, April 23, 1982. 44 "Joint Statement, Nov. 21, 1985," Department of State Bulletin, vol. 86, no. 2,106 (January 1986), 8. Gorbachev's initiative in seeking inclusion of these statements was disclosed to this writer by a Soviet participant in the delegation and confirmed by an American participant. 45 Lt. Gen. D. Volkogonov, "War and Peace in the 'Nuclear Age,'" Kraznaya zvezda, August 30, 1985. All subsequent quotations in this and the succeeding paragraph are from this article. 46 Volkogonov, "War and Peace." 47 Parity and its implications are also included in public information efforts. For example, a feature documentary set of filmed interviews by Izvestiya political observer Aleksandr Ye. Bovin with a "soldier" (Major General Viktor M. Tatarnikov of the General Staff), a "historian" (Dr. Vitaly V. Zhurkin of the USA Institute), and a "political figure" (Vadim Zagladin, of the Central Committee), on Moscow Television, November 12, 1985. 48 M. S. Gorbachev, Politicheskii doklad tsental'nogo komiteta KPSS xxvn s'yezdu kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza [Political Report of the Central

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54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61

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Raymond L. Garthoff Committee of the CPSU to the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Moscow: Politizdat, 1986), pp. 15 and 81. Gorbachev, Politicheskii doklad, pp. 81-82. It is of interest that Gorbachev is aware of the distinction between the two terms used in Russian to represent "deterrence," and intentionally covers both. Gorbachev, Politicheskii doklad, p. 15. L. Tolkunov, "The Dilemma of the Age," Kommunist, no. 7 (May 1986), 85-86. Lev Tolkunov is chairman of one of the houses of the Supreme Soviet, and an influential member of the Party Central Committee. "Program of the CPSU, New Edition, Adopted by the 27th Congress of the CPSU," Pravda, March 7, 1986. S. Tikhvinsky, "Soviet Historical Science at the Threshold of the 27th Party Congress," Kommunist, no. 1 (January 1986), 99. Tikhvinsky is a prominent historian and has been head of the Historical Diplomatic Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Gorbachev, Politicheskii doklad, p. 85. See the discussion in Raymond L. Garthoff, "New Thinking in Soviet Military Doctrine," Washington Quarterly, vol. 21 (Summer 1988), 136-45. One of the first was Gen. Army Mikhail M. Kozlov, "The Preservation of Military Strategic Parity - A Serious Factor in Assuring Peace and International Security," Voyennaya mysl', no. 12 (December 1986), 3-13. Gen. Army D. T. Yazov, "The Military Doctrine of the Warsaw Pact, a Doctrine of the Defense of Peace and Socialism," Pravda, July 27, 1987. Col. V. Strebkov, "From the Standpoint of the New Thinking: Military Parity Yesterday and Today," Krasnaya zvezda, January 3, 1989. Col. Gen. V. V. Korobushin, "On Raising the Effectiveness of Military Scientific Research," Voyennaya mysV, no. 5 (May 1988), 40. Gorbachev, Politicheskii doklad, pp. 15 and 81-82. Strebkov, Krasnaya zvezda, January 3, 1989. Vitaly Zhurkin, Sergei Karaganov and Andrei Kortunov, "Reasonable Sufficiency, Or How to Break the Vicious Circle," Novoye vremya, no. 40 (October 2, 1987), 13. "Authoritative Opinion: Clear Skies over Europe," Interview of Mikhail P. Shelepin by Yury Popov, Komsomol'akaya Pravda (Komsomol Pravda), December 28, 1988. Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir F. Petrovsky, in a roundtable discussion on the "International Program" on Moscow Television, March 11, 1989. Petrovsky's career and current responsibilities lead him to stress international institutions, but he has been a leading contributor to the new thinking even before the Gorbachev administration, and has been promoted under it. Kozlov, Voyennaya mysV, December 1986, p. 12.

Part II

Below the threshold

Soviet theater forces on a descending path Edward B. Atkeson

Moscow's decision by Summer 1991 to abide by the terms of an agreement restricting conventional forces in Europe (CFE) caused new thinking among allied governments about the nature of new East-West security arrangements. A year and a half earlier, the former chief of the Soviet General Staff, and presently close advisor to General Secretary Gorbachev, Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, remarked that the new Soviet political thinking and defense doctrine were inseparably connected. The companion foreign policy he described as threefold: demilitarization, democratization, and de-ideologization. The first element, he said, effectively excludes the use of force in relations with other countries. The second establishes the principle of equality in Soviet dealings with other countries, large and small. The third removes the ideological aspect in international relations in favor of greater reliance upon international law.1 The impact of this policy on the Soviet war machine, and, indeed, upon the political structure and forces of the entire Warsaw Pact, has been dramatic. In consequence, as Soviet theater forces enter the final decade of the twentieth century, they find themselves marching to an unfamiliar drummer along a path winding through doctrinal terra incognita. The shell of the Warsaw Pact dissolved, and the myth of socialist solidarity and brothers-in-arms among the troops of the East European states has been shattered. The armies of the USSR's "allies" have undergone steep reductions in practically all dimensions, and the political milieu has changed so precipitously that the remaining forces share little more than the most superficial common grounds for coordinated action with their former masters. If there were no other stimulus for the adoption of a new military doctrine by the Soviets, the virtual evaporation of any hope that their allies' forces might play a significant part in an offensive against NATO would be reason enough to turn to a defensive posture. Soviet theater forces must now turn much of their energy to compliance with directives for internal reorganizations and disassembly of their offensive prowess, so carefully nurtured over the past four and one half decades. The political leadership has made it clear that the forces' 81

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impressive capabilities for intimidation and invasion of neighboring states have become more of a burden than an asset to the nation. However reluctantly, the Soviet military has been obliged first to trim its offensive power unilaterally, and then to submit to international negotiations designed to disassemble much of its apparatus for waging the types of warfare for which it was designed. This chapter examines the new mandate for Soviet theater forces and the developing concept for the posture they are to assume under the new military doctrine. Further, it assesses the feasibility of the doctrine for fulfilling the security needs of the USSR, recognizing the manifold difficulties the country faces in social, economic and technological spheres. The new direction The new direction for the forces was set by the political leadership in 1986 with the promulgation of the concept of "reasonable sufficiency" in meeting military requirements. The following year, on May 29, the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact ratified a paper entitled, "On the Military Doctrine of the Warsaw Treaty Member Countries." Of particular note in the paper were these points: - "Never and under no circumstances shall we begin hostilities against any state or any alliance of states unless we ourselves come under attack." - "We have no territorial claims to any state . . . [and] do not look on any state or any people as an enemy." - "[We] do not strive to have more armed forces that necessary for defense. [The Warsaw Pact Powers] will strictly adhere to the principle of sufficiency in protecting their security." 2 Important as the document was for the alliance, it was particularly noteworthy as a formal representation of a new Soviet doctrine. Pact doctrine is an extension of Soviet doctrine, and Soviet military doctrine is the linchpin of the entire theoretical structure of Soviet military science.3 Soviet military doctrine is composed of two principal branches, one political, the other military-technical. The former has traditionally had a defensive bias and has served the declaratory policy of the state. Its principal thrust has been to avoid open conflict with the West while permitting exploitation of promising politico-military opportunities. The latter, which has served as the basic guidance for the development of the forces, has been highly offensive. It has held that in case of conflict, the forces would rapidly seize the initiative and carry the battle forward into the opponent's territory to victory.4 The new doctrine reverses the latter guidance, mandating a defensive posture for the forces. If the Soviet Armed Forces are to fulfill their instructions, changes must be made, not

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only in force structure, but in strategy, operational thinking, plans and practices, some dating back almost half a century. The defense minister, Army General Dmitri T. Yazov, summarized the thrust of the new thinking as the assumption of a posture which would provide the Soviet Union with "the magnitude of armed forces necessary to defend [itself] from attack from the outside." In the future, he wrote, the Soviet aim would be to reduce the forces of the two great alliances facing each other in Central Europe "to such a level where neither of the sides, while insuring its defense, has the forces or means enabling it to mount offensive operations." 5 In addition to the adoption of defensive posture and the reduction of forces, new guidance from the Kremlin includes a novel responsibility for the Armed forces to avoid war. As General Yazov has pointed out, Warsaw Pact military doctrine (and hence, Soviet doctrine) "is subordinated to the task of preventing war." 6 Soviet military leaders have traditionally assumed avoidance of war to be a diplomatic or political function, thus it came as some surprise that they would find it a charge of their own as well. While they may not be completely comfortable with the mission, they have devised a working list of specific measures for the forces to pursue: maintenance of parity with the West in both nuclear and nonnuclear spheres, participation by military officials in the verification of arms control and confidence-building accords, greater military participation in diplomatic meetings and discussions, improved planning for military participation in disaster relief, reorientation of operational and tactical concepts for defensive operations. 7 Many other functional matters, however, remain unclear. The Soviets still have much work to do in theoretical areas to integrate the specific changes they are making in their forces into a coherent whole. As Army General Mikhail A. Moiseyev, Chief of the General Staff, has pointed out: Nearly all the tenets of strategy, operational art, and tactics are undergoing radical changes, under the influence of both military-technical and military-political factors. Basically a new theory of military art is being created.8 It is important to note, however, that the programs for removing military material from the forward area and destroying equipment are not directly linked. Defense Minister Yazov made this clear in a radio phone-in program in February 1990 when he replied to a questioner: As for the reductions and scrapping of military hardware, yes indeed some of the hardware that has seen out its prescribed service life is being destroyed, sent for melting down. But what tanks are these? The T-34, T-54, old models of the T-55,

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T-10. But, all the new hardware will remain. Moreover, any hardware that is still serviceable is not being withdrawn from the Armed Forces. As you recommend, it is being mothballed and, should the need arise, will be used.9 Gorbachev had promised a reorganization of the remaining forces, indicating a likelihood that the remaining tanks would be redistributed. General Yazov explained that the Soviet motorized rifle divisions (MRDs) stationed in East Germany and Czechoslovakia would be stripped of their tank regiments and that the remaining tank divisions (TDs) would each lose one of their three tank regiments. These reductions, he said, would represent a 40 percent decrease in tanks for the MRDs and a 20 percent cut for the TDs. To off-set the loss of tank-killing power in the divisions, they would be allocated additional infantry and anti-tank weapons. Also, he said, their air defense and engineer mining and entrenching capabilities would be enhanced. 10 In addition to these alterations, but without indicating any specific timetable for the change, General Yazov stated that as many as half of the Soviet MRDs would be converted to "machine gun/artillery" divisions for positional and area defense missions. Information from other sources indicates that these units may be located in border districts in the Soviet Union and that they may have no more than a single battalion of tanks, greatly restricting their offensive potential. 11 While the details remain unclear, it is apparent that most - and very likely all - of the Soviet maneuver divisions (MRD and TD) remaining in the forward area in 1992 will possess an additional motorized rifle regiment, equipped with BMP infantry fighting vehicles, to replace the withdrawn tank regiments. The divisions are expected to gain in manpower, BMPs, mortars and some other small weapons as a result of the conversion. The net result will be a loss in some offensive capability, but a considerable increase in defensive staying power, with essentially no change in overall combat capability.12 Soviet operational concepts under a defensive military doctrine As clear as the Soviet retrenchment of forces appears, there is ample evidence that the Soviets have every intention of continuing to meet practical requirements for conducting respectable military operations at tactical (division and below) and operational (army and front) levels. Soviet military leaders believe it essential to maintain an ability to halt and to reverse a foreign attack, and to carry the conflict to a successful conclusion against any invader. As General Yazov has pointed out, "it is impossible to rout an aggressor with defense alone . . . After an attack has been repelled,

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the troops and naval forces must be able to conduct a decisive offensive [emphasis in original]. The switch to an offensive will be in the form of a counteroffensi ve."13 In this connection, a number of Soviet authors have resurrected accounts of battles of the Great Patriotic War to undergird their theses. Army General E. F. Ivanovskii, former Commander-in-Chief of Ground Forces, has cited the Battle of Stalingrad as an example of how victory can be achieved through a massive counteroffensive after the enemy has become bogged down in the defenses.14 Similarly, prominent academics, A. Kokoshin and V. Larionov, have cited the Battle of Kursk as a model of advantageous use of the counteroffensive for decisive defeat of an attacking enemy force.15 The debate over the application of the new doctrine has been lively. Some senior officers, such as Marshal of the Soviet Union Viktor Kulikov, former Commander-in-Chief of the Warsaw Pact, have argued that Soviet doctrine has always been defensive, implying that no changes in operational procedures are necessary. Army General Ivan Tretyak, Commander-inChief of Air Defense Forces (PVO) has written: Any changes in our Army should be considered a thousand times over before they are decided upon. Temporary benefits are a great lure. But I repeat once again - the most important thing is to have a reliable defense. If we were not so strong, imperialism would not hesitate to change the world.16

Others, particularly civilian academics who have gained new influence under the Gorbachev leadership, insist that much restructuring and reduction of forces is necessary and that it would be better done sooner than later. For example, Dr. Lev Semeyko argues: The military might of a state or coalition of states should be maintained at a level that would give no one any reason for fear, even imaginary, for one's security. It is not enough to declare one's doctrine defensive, the way NATO did. One should confirm the defensive orientation of one's doctrine by the size and deployment of one's troops, their structure and armaments and military activities. Without this declarations would be merely declarations.17

It appears that both sides in the debate are realizing some points. Force reductions and restructuring are proceeding apace. On the other hand, the concept of decisive offensive operations, if only in a counteroffensive mode, remains deeply rooted in Soviet military culture and has not been abandoned. The new defensive doctrine also impacts Soviet thinking about the utility of airborne forces, designed as they are for offensive operations. (Western sources claim that the Soviets have some seven airborne divisions; the Soviets counter that they have but five. All are small, elite organizations

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routinely held in high states of readiness.) General Albert Slyusarev, Commandant of the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School has commented, "We are training officers to be able to carry out offensive operations with a defensive force, ready to respond to attack . . . The aim is still to destroy the enemy, and, like the infantry, our men are still suited to counteroffensive actions." 18 Some insight into the practical impact of the doctrine on the forces was given by Lieutenant General V. Achlov, Commander of Airborne Forces (VDV), during a visit to the United States in 1989. He is reported to have said to an escort officer that one half of the airborne (air assault) units presently deployed in the forward area would be withdrawn, that the remaining units would be withdrawn from control of front and army commanders, and that the maximum doctrinal ranges of airborne operations would be cut in half.19 Soviet airborne forces have never enjoyed a reputation for long strategic reach comparable to that of their Western counterparts. On the other hand, they tend to be far more heavily equipped, more closely resembling Western armored cavalry regiments than airborne infantry, possessing many light armored vehicles, including assault guns. This characteristic has tended to give them high tactical mobility (once on the ground), but at the expense of strategic reach because of their weight. 20 The implications of General Achlov's remarks would seem to be that the Soviets were reducing the scale of their dependence upon airborne forces, not only in expected frequency of commitment, but in depth of operation as well. At the tactical level new Soviet literature is focusing upon activism in defensive operations. Major General I. Vorob'yev, a doctor of military science and prominent writer on operational matters, argues that maneuver is crucial to the success of a defense. It permits, he says, the defender "to evade the blow of the superior enemy forces, to maintain combat capability, and, having won time, to achieve a breakthrough in the course of the battle." 21 General Vorob'yev argues that maneuver and positional defensive tactics are not mutually exclusive, but can be "applied in close coordination." He cites as an example of such coordination in operations a security force forward of a main defensive zone. In the general's view the principal purpose of a maneuver defense is to create "the right conditions" for the main defensive grouping "to subsequently rebuff the enemy's attack." 22 General Vorob'yev believes that maneuver defensive operations are highly complex, and he expresses concern over the adequacy of current training of the officer corps for fulfilling its responsibilities in this area. He concludes his writing with the thought that "if we are seriously thinking of the priority of active tactics in defense," there must be a concerted effort to develop the requisite skills among the officers involved.23

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The feasibility of the new doctrine Intelligence. Soviet foreign intelligence agencies have a time-honored tradition of high quality service to both the Kremlin political and military leadership. There is little reason to believe that the foreign intelligence wings of the KGB and military intelligence (GRU) are unlikely to be undercut by unilateral or negotiated reduction of forces. Withdrawals of troops from the forward area, of course, will reduce the operational base structure of military reconnaissance activities, including ground and airborne signals intelligence collectors, but advances in space-based systems are likely to off-set much of the losses which might otherwise result. Further, proposals for mutual "open sky" overflight rights and on-sight inspections of designated zones in border areas under negotiated confidence building measures may largely obviate the need for continuance of the older practices. With respect to longer range, strategic intelligence, the Chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, claims to have made an effort to reduce or eliminate much of the former emphasis on domestic intelligence and to shift the focus abroad. He has argued that in today's climate "it is the external aspect [of KGB activities] that largely dominates."24 Whether or not he accurately portrays the current trends on the domestic side is not material here. Certainly, there has been no reduction in KGB efforts abroad. Mobilization for Defense. The Soviets place great emphasis on historical examples for defining the military requirements to deal with threats to their borders. One volume of the official Soviet officer's library series, devoted exclusively to the initial period of WWII, draws eleven of its thirteen chapters from this experience. While the work was published in 1974, it has increased in importance under the new doctrine because of its emphasis on Soviet operations while the country was on the strategic defensive.25 Notable in this regard is a comment in the concluding section of the book that during the period of initial defensive operations "it was possible to weaken a strong enemy's offensive capabilities and ultimately to halt its advance only after the entry into battle of major strategic reserves."26 Accordingly, the Soviets look to the speed of their mobilization and reinforcement of the front by reserve forces to buttress their defense. In the past, Western estimates of Soviet requirements for preparation time for mounting an attack on NATO have included some very short periods, measured in hours, for the highly ready forces stationed in the forward area to cross into West Germany. In 1977 the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) cited forty-eight hours as "rock bottom" for Warsaw Pact preparation. At the same time, a preparation period of 8-14 days was cited as a more likely scenario because in that time the Pact

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might achieve maximum relative strength vis-d-vis NATO. 2 7 In late 1989, however, the US Intelligence Community altered its estimate of the likely minimum warning time to something in excess of one month, possibly 33-44 days. NATO did not officially adopt the American view as it became known, but it is apparent that there is widespread agreement among the NATO partners that the likely warning period is substantially longer than previously considered. 28 Soviet Ground Forces are composed primarily of some 190 tank and motorized rifle divisions. Only about 40 percent of these forces are maintained in ready condition (i.e. having most of their equipment and at least half of their authorized complement of personnel). 29 It is expected that, in time of emergency, the remainder of the units would be filled with reservists, given rudimentary training, and shipped forward to the battle area. As Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai V. Ogarkov, former Chief of the General Staff, has written: a high degree of combat readiness of troops and naval forces is inconceivable without well organized mobilization preparation, directed toward ensuring prompt and timely shifting of military forces from a peacetime to a wartime footing.30 The principal reinforcement units for a defense of the western frontier would come from the six western military districts (Leningrad, Baltic, Byelorussian, Carpathian, Kiev and Odessa) and the two districts of the Central Strategic Reserve (Moscow and Volga-Ural). In recent years these eight districts have been estimated to be capable of providing as many as 82 ground maneuver divisions, 5 airborne and 9 artillery divisions.31 However, not all of the divisions would be expected to be employed in Central Europe. Deployments would likely be spread from above the Arctic Circle, in the north, to the Balkans, in the south, with the heaviest concentration in the center in the region designated by the Soviets as the Western Theater of Military Operations (TVD). During the Cold War, the Soviets recognized that a requirement for mobilization could develop quickly, placing enormous strains on the national system for the preparation of the country for war, and upon the transportation system in particular. The shift to a defensive doctrine, and, presumably, to more reactive operational concepts, intensifies the transportation question in some respects. They have devised plans for incremental mobilization for less than maximum threats and for gradual preparation for general mobilization.32 In accordance with the teachings of the Voroshilov General Staff Academy: the most important requirement of the operational deployment of the Armed Forces is that it be done rapidly, secretly, and in a timely manner to establish

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strong groups of forces against attacking enemy in order to repel the attack and inflict decisive losses on his forces.33 Few countries are as dependent upon their railways for moving both passengers and freight as the USSR. The enormous distances, the poor road network, and the dominant north-south orientation of the rivers, coupled with their frequent blockage by ice, oblige the Soviets to look to their railroads as their primary east-west arteries for movement of heavy goods, both civil and military. 34 The demands are so great that most trunk lines run at 95 to 100 percent of capacity.35 Western analysts have traditionally ascribed to the Soviets a capability for moving their high priority military cargo in time of crisis in sufficient quantities such that transportation was not the principal determinant of success or failure of their plans. One reason for this was that the Soviets amassed very large stocks of war supplies in the forward area, especially ammunition and petroleum products. These were estimated to be sufficient for some 60-90 days of wartime requirements. 36 As late as January 1990 there was no indication of Soviet intention to withdraw the supplies as part of the unilateral reduction in force.37 However, it seems reasonable to expect that most will be moved as the troops withdraw, at least to the Western Military Districts. The principal consideration in most transport system assessments has been the quantity of tracked military vehicles (tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled artillery, etc.) to be moved. At the peak of the 1989 riots in the Transcaucasus, however, railyards were snarled around Moscow, Leningrad, Volgograd, and many other cities.38 Further, the back-up extended into the East European states, as far as the DDR. The Poles would not permit East German freight trains to transit their country because they could not be accommodated at Brest and the Poles did not want to clog their lines with trains which could not enter the USSR. 39 In Czechoslovakia there were some fifty-two trains held on sidings at Cierna and Tisou awaiting arrival of Soviet carriages on which the goods could be transported to their destination. 40 A group of railroad employees in the central office became so exasperated with conditions and with lack of response by Soviet authorities that they wrote an open letter in Pravda to the Union Republic Councils of Ministers, pointing out the problems which the tie-up was causing: station warehouses arefilledto the brim... Thousands of railroad cars, which are in short supply, have become warehouses on wheels. For example, more than one million tons of freight and 185,000 containers are waiting at railroad station warehouses and container depots. . . . An especially large quantity of freight has accumulated at the Moscow railroad junction. As of 19 October, there were 25,200 tons of freight plus 18,700 containers awaiting shipment. There are 1,392 idle

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container cars waiting for the freight backlog to be cleared. A similar situation prevails at the Leningrad junction.41 While much of the problem was attributed to strikes and other labor difficulties, there were serious systemic difficulties identified around Leningrad. "Primitive handling equipment" which "frequently broke down" and the "very defective" central planning system which tended to send "surprise" plans to the provinces "completely disrupted" schedules. The USSR Deputy Minister of Railways indicated that the problem was not an isolated case. Speaking about the situation around Kuzbass he said: The clots that occur every year are evidence of chronic vascular disease in transport. There are still piles of industrial goods and even food at the oblast goods station.42 While the railroad crisis may give military analysts in both East and West cause for closer assessment of Soviet mobilization capabilities, the Soviets have other means for moving units from the interior. For many years they have expected that most units in the first operational echelon - those deployed in the forward area - would use organic transportation. In addition, units in the second operational echelon moving forward from permanent garrisons and mobilization areas in the homeland might also use organic transportation, especially if they were not able to complete movement prior to the outbreak of hostilities. All field units are expected to be capable of moving 300-400 km per day by road march. 43 The principal difficulty with such marches is the wear and tear on vehicles, particularly tracked vehicles, and the consequent degradation in combat readiness. This can be alleviated to some extent by the use of heavy truck tractors with trailers for movement of tanks and other armored vehicles. These were used extensively for heavy haul work in connection with the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. Recent estimates place the total Soviet inventory of such vehicles at about 3,500, with some 2,300 devoted to support of the High Command of Forces in the Western TVD. The latter number is capable of lifting simultaneously all of the tracked vehicles often tank regiments, or of two or three tank or motorized divisions. At a standard road march speed of 25 to 30 km per hour for twelve hours per day, the vehicles could deliver their payloads a distance of 1,000 km from stations deep in the interior to forward assembly areas in a period of 72 hours. By surging the traffic with 24 hour driving, the performance could be increased for a short period of time. Clearly the transporters are not a substitute for the railroads, but they afford substantial flexibility to the transport system.44 Transportation problems could recede in importance if the Soviets were to constrict the periphery of the landmass envisioned for defense. As Soviet troops are withdrawn from the forward area it is likely that the General Staff will be obliged to draft plans with the assumption that the defense

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might have to be conducted within the borders of the Soviet Union rather than on lines drawn further forward. This would be a less desirable option, but would alleviate certain mobilization difficulties. Most units would find that they had shorter moves to reach their assigned defensive positions, and the complexities of rail switch-over from wide to standard gauge track, which now occur at the Polish and Czechoslovakian borders, would be eliminated. Human Factors. Troop motivation has become a major problem in the Armed Forces. Ethnic prejudices, hazing of new conscripts, emerging awareness of nationalism among non-Russian soldiers, and a growing sense of professional insecurity among officers have greatly complicated morale. Further, new laws exempting students from the draft have affected the numbers of high-quality young men available for the semi-annual conscription call-up. Compounding all the other problems, a demographic sea change has occurred in the mix of Slavic and non- Slavic young men entering the Armed Forces. The shift in the proportion of draft-age males (18-21 years) in the Soviet Union coming from the seven republics of Transcaucasus and Central Asia in the last decade has jumped from 28 percent to 37 percent (a development which had not previously been expected before the year 2000). While fertility trends throughout the country are presently on the increase, the number of women of child-bearing ages in the Slavic areas is expected to drop precipitously in the mid-1990s as a result of decreases in fertility rates in those areas in the early 1970s.45 Some 90 percent of rural youths from Central Asia (who make up the vast majority of the 37 percent figure) either speak no Russian or speak it very poorly. 46 In the past they could be assigned to non-technical tasks in the combat arms or to labor units in the construction and railway branches. As their representation in each six-month draft cohort increases, however, the burden of training sufficient soldiers to fill the more complicated and sensitive duties will become more taxing. Soviet military leaders are concerned about the poor quality of recruits. The Chief of the Main Political Directorate, General Aleksi Lizichev, addressed the Congress of People's Deputies saying: We are once again calling up quite a sizable proportion of young people - primarily into the construction troops - who already have a criminal record, have moral and physical defects, and who are already familiar with both drugs and alcohol.47 Defense Minister Yazov has echoed the complaint in speaking to the Supreme Soviet, reporting that "zonal political detachments have been created" to deal with discipline specifically in the construction troops, but

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"unfortunately we cannot assign an officer to every platoon of construction sub-units." 48 While the complaints have thus far focused on the construction troops, the demographic trends will spread the difficulties throughout the Armed Forces, particularly the Ground Forces. Compounding the problem is likely to be the impact of the law exempting university students from the call-up or deferring their service. According to Viktor A. Sadovnich, first vice chancellor of Lomonosov Moscow State University, some hundreds of thousands of students are affected.49 Defense Minister Yazov has allowed that the deferment of 340,000 students of higher educational institutions and 30,000 in secondary institutions can presently be accommodated because of the current program for reduction of 500,000 in the authorized strength of the Armed Forces. 50 However, the matter is likely to generate recurring problems unless the forces are substantially further reduced through the international negotiations process. It is a frequent practice to grant full service duty exemption to highly skilled workers, such as the university students are likely to become upon completion of their studies. Moreover, the law is likely to exacerbate the growing ethnic mix problem in the services because many more Slavs than non-Slavs gain entry to institutions of higher learning with their linguistic capabilities and generally superior educational backgrounds. Air Defense. Under its traditional offensive doctrine, the Soviets counted on attacking NATO airfields with a concerted effort of combined armed forces.51 In addition to mounting a large offensive counterair operation at the outset of hostilities with tactical aircraft and bombers, the Soviets have expected that surface-to-surface missile systems might be employed once the ground forces had advanced to positions from which the fields would be in range of these weapons systems. They have also anticipated that fast moving forward detachments or operational maneuver groups (OMG) might be used to overrun the airfields.52 While NATO airfields continue to be suitable targets for offensive air strikes under the defensive doctrine, (and possibly by airborne troops in special cases), these operations would be much more difficult under the new doctrine than the old. Further, if the Soviet defensive effort were to be based upon Soviet territory, rather than upon that of its East European allies, the difficulties would be more difficult still because of the greater ranges involved. As one analyst has pointed out, the reorganization of Soviet divisions is likely to increase their organic air defense capability by at least 18 hand-held SA-7 or SA-14 short-range surface-to-air (SAM) missile systems. This will automatically occur as a consequence of the conversion of one tank regiment in each division to a motorized rifle regiment. Presumably these weapons will be replaced by the new SA-16, a new

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system of greater length and accuracy than either the 7 or 14. In addition, the current ZSU-23-4 air defense guns and the SA-9 SAMs of the SAM battalions in tank and motorized rifle regiments are being replaced by 2S6 vehicles (which mount twin 30mm guns and SA-19 missiles) and SA-13 missile systems. 53 In addition to these weapons, each Soviet maneuver division is authorized a SAM regiment equipped with the 18.5 mile range SA-6 or the shorter range SA-8. These weapons are scheduled to be replaced by the new mobile SA-15 low to medium altitude system. At army and front level the Soviets currently field SAM brigades with SA-4s and 12s. A longer-range, high altitude version of the SA-12 (12B) is considered capable of intercepting some types of ballistic missiles. Also, the Soviets have recently begun deployment of a mobile version of their strategic, high speed (Mach 6), all-altitude SA-10, designated 10B. These systems could be deployed with the theater forces to further bolster the air defenses.54 While the tactical air defense structure may remain unsettled for some period while the General Staff adjusts to other aspects of the total reorganization, it appears that the momentum of past Soviet SAM research and development efforts has been adequate to carry the field forces through the transitional period. The effects of this momentum could be reinforced if the Soviets were to place additional emphasis on fielding late model air superiority aircraft to ensure adequate coverage of anticipated battle areas and the lines of communication leading forward from the Soviet homeland. Technology. Major General V. V. Larionov, one of the authors of the landmark Soviet work of the 1960s, Military Strategy, recently identified four principal aspects of technological advancement in conventional weaponry: First. An increase in the mobility of military systems and their combat readiness. The time for getting weapons ready for combat, specialists estimate, has been reduced overall by a factor of 3-4, and in air defense systems - by an order of magnitude. Second. An increase in the yield and kill capability of charges with conventional explosives, to such an extent that their upper limit today approaches the lower yield of nuclear munitions. . . . Third. An increase in the ability to aim weapons (high-precision land-based and air-based weapons, reconnaissance/strike and fire systems) . . . Finally, the fourth and most significant change. . . . conventional weapons, as well as nuclear weapons, today are capable of participating, figuratively speaking, in "non-contact actions," when an enemy's combat assets are hit without direct clashes between people on the ground or at sea (that is, without penetrating enemy territory,flyinginto enemy airspace, or invading enemy waters).55 Much Soviet military thinking about exploitation of new technologies springs from the fertile mind of the former chief of the General Staff,

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Marshal Ogarkov. However, the Marshal's view of future warfare, incorporating high technology, may have carried with it the seeds of its own frustration. The devices envisioned are enormously costly and some may be beyond the capabilities of the Soviet Union to produce in the foreseeable future. Secretary Gorbachev identified "the stresses created by scientific and technological advancement" as a primary stimulus for the perestroika initiative in the first place. Clearly he hoped that by reducing Western perceptions of the Warsaw Pact threat through unilateral reductions he could slow the pace of arms competition to more manageable proportions. He as much as said so when he identified a need for "normal international conditions for internal progress" and "new political thinking" with an emphasis on disarmament. The Ogarkov formula would have placed the emphasis on expansion and competition with the West in the area of high technology where the USSR enjoys no relative advantage. But perhaps more important, the path which Ogarkov favored would have placed increasing emphasis on tactical and operational ballistic and cruise missile systems. Given the difficulty in discerning the differences between missiles with nuclear warheads and those with conventional charges, his case ran afoul of Soviet desires for elimination of short range nuclear delivery systems from the European theater. Paradoxically, Ogarkov's formula could have led to a perpetuation of reliance on nuclear weapons rather than a curtailment. As long as missile systems maintain a range and payload great enough to be considered potential nuclear weapons carriers, there may continue to be a reluctance on both sides to move entirely away from a nuclear posture. Nevertheless, as the Soviets move further into the realm of defensively oriented forces they may find that they are stuck with the Ogarkov thesis. A recent Warsaw Pact analysis of the implications of high technology weaponry indicates that new, longer range and more lethal conventional weapons could afford a defender opportunities to strike the attacker before the battle is joined. While in the past, it said, a defender might select only the locale of the engagement, the new technologies afford him options as to the timing of the action as well.56 Further, with his longer range systems, the defender may no longer have to occupy all of the areas to be defended, but might deny the attacker access by fire. As much as the Soviets may wish to do away with short range missiles on the battlefield because of their nuclear implications, the study indicates that the Soviets and their Pact allies may be forced to retain them for conventional defensive purposes. Moral and Budgetary Support. In late 1989, Defense Minister Yazov complained to an interviewer that: manifestations of anti-army feelings have recently become more frequent in a number of regions of the country. Their initiators, instigators, and organizers are nationalist, extremist, separatist forces who pass themselves off as the champion of

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'nationalist interests' and try, on the pretext of'protecting' these interests, to set the people against the army and erase from people's minds the ideas of patriotism, internationalism, military duty, and responsibility for the Motherland's fate and for its defense. They have assumed the most acute, peremptory forms in the republics of the Baltic and Transcaucasia and some of the regions of Moldavia and the Central Asian republics.57 Much of the alienation has occurred as part of the emergence of nationalist spirit, as mentioned by General Yazov. With considerable reluctance, regular units of the Soviet Army have been called in for riot suppressive duty. With the notable exception of Azerbaijan, Secretary Gorbachev's move to restore order in that republic in January 1990 received warm applause according to contemporary man-inthe-street interviews around the country. Typical of citizen remarks were those of Alexander Demenov, a construction worker from southern Moscow. 'There was no choice," he said, "but to stabilize the situation. Many people do not always agree with Gorbachev, but what I think you will not find is anyone who will criticize him in this situation." 58 US intelligence agencies have attempted comparisons of US and Soviet defense budgets in the past, but the results have been highly controversial and may contain inaccuracies "substantially greater" than 15 percent according to the authors. 59 The real intent of Kremlin decision makers regarding the magnitude of the defense effort may only become apparent in time, assuming they continue to publish comparable budgets in the future. In this connection, it is unlikely that the costs of "offensive" and "defensive" equipment in the hands of theater force troops can usefully be compared. In most cases weapons can be used in either an attack or defensive mode. Besides, modern tanks and ground attack aircraft (which might be considered "offensive") can be quite expensive, but so can anti-tank and air defense guided missiles and other "defensive" weapons. While reductions in the size of the Soviet forces will, of course, affect the defense budget, it seems less likely that the defensive doctrine will have a recognizable impact in this area. On balance it appears that the Soviet leadership has directed the country's theater forces down a path which seems reasonable for its security and feasible for its capabilities. While there are pockets of resistance to aspects of the move, the path seems clear. The belief of many in the ultimate superiority of the offensive is satisfied to some extent by provision for strong counteroffensive operations. Others may accept the defensive doctrine simply as the outer limit of Soviet capabilities under the new economic conditions at home and the practical loss of allies abroad. While earlier concepts for offensive operations against the West may have made sense in their time, they can pass the tests neither of reasonableness nor feasibility today. Secretary Gorbachev's expressed desire to turn the

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Warsaw Pact into an alliance of more political than military weight makes virtue of necessity. Without the cooperation of the non- Soviet members, an offensive against NATO would have very poor chances of success, and in any event would likely turn into a lengthy conflict in which victor and vanquished would suffer indistinguishable losses. The Soviets make a persuasive case that the day of difference between conventional and theater nuclear war is waning, if not vanishing. With conventional weapons of ever greater effectiveness coming to hand and some 200 nuclear power plants - all potential Chernobyl-like disaster centers - in operation in the region, they argue, all war in Central Europe must be avoided. The security of one state is to be had through the strengthening of the security of all, ally and adversary alike. In January 1991 the Soviet Defense Ministry released a draft 10-year reform plan for the Soviet Armed Forces. If it survives review, and is implemented essentially as written, the physical size of the forces will continue to diminish over the course of the 1990s. The strength in the year 2000 is envisioned as one-third less than a decade earlier. But the changes are not expected to be limited to the size of the establishment. The Defense Ministry has evidenced an acceptance, at least in principle, of a concept of legislative oversight - preferably by the Supreme Soviet rather than by the more liberal Congress of Peoples Deputies. 60 If the legislative assemblies take root as active and useful partners with the political leadership, there may develop some basis for hope that the Soviet Armed Forces could evolve as legitimate defenders of the peoples they have long claimed to serve. If this comes to pass, the descending path which the forces have been following could turn out to be concerned with little more than physical size. Many other aspects, such as force legitimacy, troop morale, and popular support, could be substantially enhanced through the process. But this is a big "if." Notes 1 V. Pogrebenkov, "Our Military Doctrine," Agitator armii i Flota, no. 24 (1989), (Moscow), 2-4; reported in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report, Soviet Union, FBIS-SOV-90-021, January 31, 1990, p. 114. 2 "On the Military Doctrine of the Warsaw Pact Member States," Pravda, May 31,1989, pp. 1-2; reported in FBIS-SOV-89-104, June 1,1989, pp. BB19-22. 3 See discussion of Soviet military doctrine in S. N. Kozlov (ed.), The Officer's Handbook (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1971), translated by DGIS Multilingual Section, Translation Bureau, Secretary of State Department, Ottawa, Canada, and published under the auspices of the US Air Force, pp. 61-66. 4 Kozlov (ed.), The Officer's Handbook. 5 Dmitri T. Yazov, Pravda, July 27 1987, as reported by Don Oberdofer, "Shift in Military Policy: Gorbachev, Aides Emphasizing Idea of 'Reasonable Sufficiency'," The Washington Post, November 30, 1987, p. A6.

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6 Yazov, On Guard Over Socialism and Peace (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1987); JPRS-UMA-88-001-L, p. 10. 7 From private discussions by the author with Soviet general officers in Moscow on January 23 and 24, 1989. 8 "From Defensive Doctrine Positions. Colonel General M.A. Moiseyev, Candidate USSR People's Deputy, Meets Communists From the USSR Armed Forces General Staff," Krasnaya zvezda, February 10 1989, translated in Federal Broadcast Information Service Soviet Report, FBIS-SOV-89-028, February 13, 1989, p. 80. 9 "Ostankino Radio Studio on the Line," Moscow Domestic Service, February 17 1990, reported in FBIS-SOV-90-036, February 22, 1990, p. 107. 10 "USSR Defense Minister Army General D. T. Yazov Answers Questions by an Izvestiya Correspondent: 'In the Interests of Universal Security and Peace'," Izvestiya, February 28, 1989, p. 3, translated in FBIS-SOV-89-038, February 28, 1989, p. 3. 11 "USSR Defense Minister Army General D. T. Yazov Answers Questions . . . " (FBIS-SOV-89-038) and Phillip A. Karber, "Soviet Implementation of the Gorbachev Unilateral Military Reductions: Implications for Conventional Arms Control in Europe," testimony before the US House Armed Services Committee, March 14, 1989; BDM Corporation, unpublished charts, p. 6. Mr. Karber quoted Soviet Major General Batenin speaking to FRG parliamentarians in February 1989: "In the Soviet border defense districts - the Baltic, the Carpathian, and the Belorussian defense districts, most districts would be restructured on the model of the machine gun/artillery divisions which the Soviet Union once had. These divisions are good from the defense of fortified regions or bastions. They will have lower mobility, and hence are more oriented for defense." On the face of the descriptions of the new divisions thus far, however, the Southern and Far Eastern TVDs would seem to offer the best opportunities for their employment. 12 Phillip A. Karber, "The Gorbachev Unilateral Reductions and the Restructuring of Soviet/Warsaw Pact Forces," testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, September 13, 1989; BDM Corporation, unpublished charts, p. 3. 13 D. T. Yazov, Na strazhe sotsializma i mira [On Guard over Socialism and Peace] (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1987), p. 34, cited in Edward L. Warner III, "New Thinking and Old Realities in Soviet Defense Policy," Survival, January/ February 1989, p. 23. 14 E. F. Ivanovskii, "The Outstanding Victory of the Soviet Army," Voennoostoricheskiy Zhurnal, November 1987, pp. 44-53, cited in Dale R. Herspring, "The Soviet High Command Looks at Gorbachev," International Institute for Strategic Studies Adelphi Papers, no. 235 (Spring 1989), 55. 15 A. Kokoshin and V. Larionov, "The Battle of Kursk in Light of Today's Defensive Doctrine," Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, August 1987, pp. 32-33, cited in Herspring, "The Soviet High Command." 16 Aleksandr Savelyev, "Debate of Warsaw Pact Military Doctrine in USSR and Socialist Pluralism," APN Military Bulletin, no. 10 (May 1988), pp. 5-8; reported in JPRS-UMA-88-017, August 1, 1988, p. 4. 17 Savelyev, "Debate of Warsaw Pact Military Doctrine." 18 Jacques Isnard, "Red Army in Throes of Restructuring," Le Monde, April 4, 1989, p. 6; translated in FBIS-SOV-89-071.

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19 David P. Grogan, unpublished paper, "The Impact of Soviet Defensive Doctrine on Their Airborne and Air Assault Forces," Defense Intelligence College, p. 17. 20 Defense Intelligence Agency, Soviet Divisional Organizational Guide, pp. 82-88; and DOD, SMP 1986, p. 69. 21 I. Vorob'yev, "Mobile, Active, Maneuver (Defense) . . . , " Krasnaya Zvezda, September 27, 1989, p. 2; translated with commentary by Soviet Studies Research Center, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, November 1989 (ADVAB 00427). 22 Vorob'yev, "Mobile, Active, Maneuver." 23 Vorob'yev, "Mobile, Active, Maneuver." 24 "Kryuchkov Discusses Reform, Oversight of KGB," Moscow New Times, no. 32, 8-14, pp. 5-8, reported in FBIS-SOV-89-176, 13 September 1989, p. 71. 25 S. P. Ivanov, The Initial Period of War (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1974), translated and published under the auspices of the US Air Force, 1986. 26 Ivanov, The Initial Period of War, p. 306. 27 John M. Collins, US-Soviet Military Balance: Concepts and Capabilities 19601980 (New York: McGraw-Hill Publications Co., 1980), p. 310. 28 Barbara Starr, "NATO Will Get '1 Month Warning of Attack'," Jane's Defense Weekly, December 23,1989. Some estimates run much longer - up to two years. See James J. Tritten, America Promises to Come Back: A New National Strategy, US Naval Postgraduate School, December 26, 1990, pp. 32-34. 29 US Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power 1990, p. 77. 30 Nikolai Ogarkov, Vsegda v Gotovnosti k Zashchite Otechestva (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1982), pp. 58-59; cited in John J. Yurechko, "Soviet Reinforcement and Mobilization Issues," in Jeffry Simon (ed.), NATO-Warsaw Pact Force Mobilization (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1988), p. 96. 31 Yurechko, "Soviet Reinforcement," pp. 80-81. The Volga-Ural Military District was formed on 1 September 1989 through amalgamation of the Volga and Ural districts; see S. Mostovshchikov, "Ural Military District Abolished," Izvestiya, September 5, 1989, morning edition, p. 2; reported in FBIS-SOV89- 171, September 6, 1989, p. 89. 32 See Yurechko, "Soviet Reinforcement," for description of Soviet mobilization system. 33 Ghulam War dak (compiler) and Graham Turbiville (ed.), The Voroshilov Lectures: Materials from the Soviet General Staff Academy, Vol. 1, Issues of Soviet Military Strategy (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1989), p. 218. 34 Jane's World Railways 1988-89 (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1988), p. 722. 35 "Responses by N. I. Ruzhkov to Questions by Gudok," Gudok, 3 December 1989, p. 1; reported in FBIS-SOV-90-002, January 3, 1990, p. 93. 36 US Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power 1987, p. 95. 37 Michael R. Gordon, "Soviets Still Stocking Ammunition, US Says," New York Times, January 11, 1990, p. A15. 38 Ye. Mironova, Moscow Television 1800 GMT October 21, 1989; reported in FBIS-SOV-89-203, October 23, 1989, p. 64. 39 S. Baygarov, "Impasse on . . . the Border: Why Freightcars Have Accumulated

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40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55

at GDR Stations," Pravda, October 24 1989, second edition, p. 5.; reported in FBIS-SOV-89-205, p. 31. Prague Television Service, 1830 GMT, October 20, 1989; reported in FBISSOV-89-209, October 31, 1989, p. 13. "Letter to Pravda," Pravda, October 22, 1989, second edition, p. 1; reported in FBIS-SOV-89-207, October 27, 1989, pp. 77-78. L. Frolov et al., "Tropical Reportage," Sovetskaya Rossiya, November 4,1989, second edition, p. 1; reported in FBIS-SOV-89-218, November 14, 1989, pp. 79-80. Wardak and Turbiville, Voroshilov Lectures, pp. 222-224. Kenneth M. Keltner and Graham H. Turbiville, "Soviet Reinforcement in Europe," Military Review, April 1987, pp. 34-43. Murray Feshback, "Demographic Trends in the Soviet Union: Serious Implications for the Soviet Military," NATO Review, October 1989, pp. 11-12. Feshback, "Demographic Trends." "Poor Quality of Soviet Conscripts," Jane's Defense Weekly, September 16, 1989, p. 504. "Poor Quality of Soviet Conscripts." "The Army Reduction and the Students," Literaturnaya Gazeta, April 5, 1989, p. 13; reported in FBIS-SOV-89-072, April 17, 1989, p. 107. Moscow Domestic (broadcast) Service, 1400 GMT, July 3, 1989; reported in FBIS-SOV-89-127, July 5, 1989, p. 40. Wardak and Turbiville, Voroshilov Lectures, pp. 321-322. Also see John G. Hines and Phillip A. Peterson, "The Warsaw Pact Strategic Offensive: The OMG in Context," International Defense Review, October 1983, pp. 1,3911,392. Hines and Peterson, "Warsaw Pact Strategic Offensive," p. 1,392. John W. R. Taylor, "Gallery of Soviet Aerospace Weapons," Air Force Magazine, March 1989, p. 102. Taylor, "Soviet Aerospace Weapons." V. V. Larionov, "The Problems of Preventing Conventional War in Europe," Mirovaya

56

57

58 59

60

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ekonomika

i mezhdunarodnyye

otnosheniya,

no. 7 (1989), 31-^4-3;

published in Soviet Press Selected Translations, US Air Force Intelligence Agency, November/December 1989, p. 138. Stanislaw Koziej, "Anticipated Directions for Change in Tactics of Ground Troops," Ground Forces Review (Poland), September 1986, p. 4, cited in Phillip A. Petersen and Notra Truloc III, "A 'New' Soviet Military Doctrine: Origins and Implications," Soviet Studies Research Center, RMA Sandhurst, document C68, summer 1988, p. 20. "The Defense of the Fatherland Brooks No Parochialism, Egotism, or Selfinterest . . . , " Pravda, 13 November 1989, first edition, p. 3; reported in FBIS-SOV-89-217, November 13, 1989, p. 104. Esther B. Fein, "Soviet Citizens Back Gorbachev on Use of Troops in Azerbaijan," The San Francisco Chronicle, January 18, 1990, p. A16. US National Foreign Assessment Center, CIA, "Soviet and US Defense Activities, 1971-80: A Dollar Cost Comparison," SR81-1OOO5, January 1981, pp. 10-11. Steven J. Zaloge, "Soviets Draft Reform Plan," Armed Forces Journal International, February 1991, p. 16.

5

Protection from one's friends: the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact Christopher Jones

The Warsaw Pact ended in July 1991. Nineteen months earlier in the city of Warsaw itself, however, the Pact had actually surrendered to the peoples of Eastern Europe. The Polish foreign minister, Krzyztof Skubiszewski, accepted the surrender on behalf of the Solidarity government formed in late August. Skubiszewski, the first non-communist foreign minister in Eastern Europe since 1948, acknowledged the capitulation of the Soviet alliance system by signing a communique of the Committee of Foreign Ministers of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO). The communique stated: despite all the ambiguities of the situation, the conditions in Europe have ripened for a radical turning point in relations among the countries of the continent and for a gradual overcoming of its divisions and for a final eradication of the Cold War. One of the basic conditions for the construction of a secure, peaceful, undivided Europe is recognition of the rights of each nation to independent determination of its fate, to the free choice of the path of its social, political and economic development without interference from outside.1 The Warsaw Pact statement followed by one day a declaration by the Soviet government that it had renounced its claim to a right of military intervention in Eastern Europe. The Soviet renunciation of the "Brezhnev doctrine" came in a joint Finnish-Soviet statement of October 26, 1989 which in effect announced the "Finlandization" of Eastern Europe. In a joint statement on Europe, both signatories pledged Unconditional respect for the principle of the freedom of socio-political choice, the de-ideolization and humanization of international relations, the subordination of all foreign policy activities to international law, and the supremacy of all-human interests and values.2 At a December session of the Political Consultative Committee convened in Moscow for the ostensible purpose of de-briefing Gorbachev on the results of the Soviet-American summit meeting in Malta, the PPC affirmed the October declaration of the WTP Foreign Ministers by issuing a condemnation of the 1968 WTO intervention in Czechoslovakia.3 Gorbachev reconfirmed the Soviet pledge not to intervene in Eastern 100

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Europe in his opening speech to the December, 1989 session of the USSR's Congress of People's Deputies. Gorbachev also acknowledged the consequences of the revocation of the Soviet security guarantee: Fraternal parties are no longer ruling in Poland and Hungary. Our friends in the German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia have largely lost their positions. New political forces have emerged in the arena. They include both those who support the socialist idea and those who seek other ways of social development The Soviet Union is building its relations with East European countries - whether they have been carrying out transformations for quite some time, or have only embarked on that road, or are yet to do so - on a single position of respect for sovereignty, non-interference and recognition of freedom of choice. We proceed from the fact that any nation has the right to decide its fate itself, including the choice of a system and the ways, pace and methods of its development.4 The choices of Gorbachev The "ambiguities of the situation" recognized by the Committee of Foreign Ministers on October 27 was that the unexpected parliamentary victories of Solidarity forced Gorbachev to decide in late August whether to accept the formation of the Solidarity-dominated government in Poland headed by Tadeusz Mazowiecki. This decision in turn required Gorbachev to decide if the USSR would continue to use military force to maintain communist parties in power in Eastern Europe. By late October, Gorbachev had decided to rule out the use of force to maintain communist parties in power. In making this decision, Gorbachev left the communist regimes of East Europe to begin hasty negotiations with their alienated societies over the terms under which they would surrender their political monopolies. In revoking the Soviet security guarantee to ruling parties, Gorbachev had also put an end to the Warsaw Pact as an alliance of ruling parties. As an alliance of ruling communist parties,5 the Warsaw Pact had been bound together by the parties' common fear of their own societies and their common dependence on a highly-visible USSR/WTO capability for military intervention. These parties had also been bound together by their fear of German reunification. German reunification was a threat to the survival of one of the interdependent ruling parties, the Socialist Unity Party of the German Democratic Republic. German reunification also threatened the

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emergence of a German economic/technological/cultural superpower almost certain to displace the dominant influence of the Soviet Union over the non-military affairs of the region. Whether or not Gorbachev realized the full implications of his decision, the revocation of the Soviet security guarantee 6 constituted the abolition of the Warsaw Pact - national military forces would never again be integrated into a Soviet-dominated command structure. 7 From the Brezhnev doctrine to the Sinatra doctrine: the role of military doctrine in the Warsaw Pact The Soviet security guarantee to the ruling communist parties of Eastern Europe had required these parties to impose on their national defense ministries a common WTO military doctrine virtually identical with Soviet doctrine. WTO doctrine had two mutually-dependent elements, a militarypolitical component and a military-technical component. The military-political component of the common doctrine required the member states to prepare for "joint defense of the gains of socialism against internal or external reaction." 8 This principle in turn required that the military-technical component of doctrine provide for a series of joint WTO agencies and programs that linked the key structures of national defense systems to the corresponding structures of the Soviet forces assigned to the European theater. The practical effect of the common WTO doctrine was to fragment national control over national armed forces. WTO doctrine thus preempted organized national military resistance to USSR/WTO interventions. The client regimes of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union supported the common doctrine of the WTO precisely because it preempted national defense systems capable of resisting Soviet interventions in support of the local party or the pro-Soviet faction of the local party. Romania, formally a member of the WTO, had adopted a doctrine of national resistance to such interventions, as had Albania, a former member of the Warsaw Pact, and Yugoslavia, the first communist state of Eastern Europe to demonstrate that national sovereignty was based on national control over national armed forces. Each of these communist regimes was willing to run the risk that these national defense systems might provide shields behind which local anti-communist forces might challenge the local party. Each of these three independent parties denied the WTO the use of its national armed forces for use in joint activities aimed at enhancing the Soviet offensive threat to NATO. Each of these parties also pursued an independent European security policy that challenged the legitimacy of

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both the NATO and Warsaw Pact military alliance systems. The emerging independent regimes of East Europe are likely to adopt the kind of territorial defense doctrines typical of the independent communist and non-communist states along the current East-West divide. The common WTO doctrine had also enabled the Soviets to detach the elite components of the loyal East European forces from national control and combine them into a "Greater Socialist Army" 9 formally designated by the WTO as the Combined Armed Forces (CAF). 10 The CAF in turn had guaranteed the survival of the East German state by projecting an offensive threat against the Federal Republic of Germany and its NATO allies. The USSR/WTO offensive threat compelled the Eastern and Western states of Europe to accept a political status quo that lacked indigenous support in the two Germanys and Eastern Europe. By revoking the Soviet security guarantee to the ruling East European parties, Gorbachev destroyed the capability of these parties to maintain the WTO agencies and joint programs required by the common military doctrine. Gorbachev did not withdraw the USSR/WTO military guarantee to ruling communist parties because of any failure on the part of USSR/WTO forces. There was no sudden disintegration of command structures, discipline, reliability, technology or intelligence (although ethnic tensions within the Soviet Army had become greatly exacerbated during 1988-89.) n There was no "doctrinal rebellion" like that attempted by the Czechoslovak officer corps in 196812 or the Polish officer corps in the early 1960s.13 The Warsaw Pact in late October, 1979 remained capable of initiating a military intervention to save any East European communist party from a popular uprising. What failed was the capacity of the Polish United Workers Party to survive in the process of carrying out a reform program personally blessed by Gorbachev as the test case of perestroika in Eastern Europe. There was no popular uprising to put down in Poland. But neither was there a functioning communist party to prop up. The impact of the creation of a Solidarity-dominated government in Poland on the WTO resulted from the interaction of the events in Poland with three bloc-wide processes. The first was the negotiation of new social contracts between the alienated societies of the Soviet empire and ruling "ethnic" communist parties in both Eastern Europe and the union republics of the USSR. The second was the diplomatic program designed to build "a common European home" from the Atlantic to the Urals. The third program, which linked Gorbachev's intra-bloc and East-West policies, was the security program based on NATO-Warsaw Pact arms control and the adoption of a

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new USSR/WTO military doctrine of "reasonable and reliable sufficiency." Gorbachev had hoped to find a solution to the interlocking domestic crises of the Soviet bloc through reform programs in the USSR, Poland and Hungary. Perestroika in these states sought a middle ground between the political monopoly of ruling communist parties and the political participation of previously alienated societies. The communist regimes in the GDR, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria sought no such middle ground, evidently on the assumption, probably accurate, that no such ground existed. The Ceausescu regime emphatically rejected even consideration of a reform program for Romania. Gorbachev hoped he could lead his reformist colleagues in East Europe along afineline between sharing power and surrendering power. This line eventually led to the August crisis over the formation of a Polish government dominated by Solidarity. In the common European home the subjects of the Soviet empire were to support the policies of perestroika in exchange for honorary citizenship in a new Europe relatively open to the free movement of people, goods and even ideas. In the common European home the work force of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was to learn the self-discipline and respect for "the rule of law" characteristic of the Western labor force of the European Community. To guard against an unwelcome increase in Western political and cultural influence in a common European home Gorbachev simultaneously sought an extraordinary expansion of intra-bloc programs aimed at intensified integration of economic, scientific, technical and military institutions of the WTO states.14 As in the USSR, Gorbachev sought to diminish the role of the party apparat in bloc affairs in favor of more "organic" ties of corresponding institutions with common interests. The goal was to promote the emergence of genuinely competent regimes in East Europe which would free the USSR of the economic burden of subsidizing poorly-managed socialist economic systems. Gorbachev expected the member states of the EC and NATO to subsidize perestroika in Eastern Europe and the USSR in exchange for substantial reductions of WTO offensive capabilities and substantial mutual reductions in military spending. These expectations were summed up accurately, if awkwardly, in the title of the July, 1989 Declaration of the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact: "For A Stable and Secure Europe, Free From Nuclear and Chemical Weapons, For a Substantial Reduction of Armed Forces, Armaments and Military Expenditures."15 In his arms control program, which he began to develop in January of

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1986,16 Gorbachev had sought a more rational and proportionate relationship between the conservative political objectives of the USSR in Europe and the explosive and expensive dynamics of the NATO-WTO military confrontation. That is, he wanted to disengage Soviet military forces in Eastern Europe from the East-West arms race but leave them in place to provide security guarantees to the ruling East European parties. This revised USSR/WTO military posture was based on a new military doctrine that emerged in late May, 1987. The new doctrine sought to combine a "defensive" posture toward NATO as a whole with a "counteroffensive" capability in Central Europe. The justification for the counteroffensive capability was the alleged threat of "German revanchism." The practical effect of the counteroffensive capability was to maintain the Soviet security guarantee to the ruling parties of the Soviet bloc.17 His arms control policy toward the West called for disproportionately large reductions of Soviet nuclear and conventional forces in Europe in exchange for Western support for "stability" in Eastern Europe. In July of 1989, in a speech to the West European parliamentary assembly in Strasbourg, he promised both Western and Eastern audiences that the USSR would no longer execute military interventions against ruling communist parties,18 as the USSR did in 1968 against the Dubcek government in Czechoslovakia.19 Gorbachev's objective in the spring and summer of 1989 was to stabilize and revitalize the internal political systems of Eastern Europe by transforming NATO-Warsaw Pact relations through arms control agreements and by transforming the EC and CMEA blocs into a "common European home." On the eve of Gorbachev's 1989 trips to Bonn, Paris and Strasbourg to promote both his arms control agenda and the concept of a common European home, Vitalii Zhurkin, director of Moscow's new institute on European affairs, explained in Pravda how East and West were to conduct themselves after the achievement of substantial arms reductions: The complex of relations that has been established in the West is an important element in the stability of the situation as a whole. Therefore, the East must conduct itself in such a way that this stability is not disturbed; it must proceed from the premise that the status and development of relations among the Atlantic states are the West's concern. This applies equally to stability in Eastern Europe. And we in turn have a right to expect the same attitude on the part of the West.20

But Gorbachev's programs for arms control, for construction of a common European home and for domestic reforms within the Soviet bloc were not only interdependent but mutually contradictory. And each of the three lines of policy had become hostage to the other two.21 The Polish political

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crisis of August 18-19 forced Gorbachev to acknowledge the contradictory directions of his policies and to choose which he would continue to follow. For Gorbachev to have used armed force against the Mazowiecki government would simply have been to exacerbate the intractable socioeconomic crisis in Poland that had festered since the declaration of martial law in 1981. 22 Armed repression of the Solidarity government almost certainly would have put a halt to Gorbachev's domestic reform programs in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Military action would have unquestionably destroyed all of the arms control and diplomatic policies aimed at securing Western support for perestroika and the construction of "a common European home." When Gorbachev announced his epochal decision not to use Soviet military power to keep East European regimes in power, his press spokesman, Gennady Gerasimov, breezily described the new Soviet policy as "the Sinatra doctrine." Gerasimov explained that he was referring to the classic Frank Sinatra song, "My Way." According to Gerasimov, Gorbachev had authorized Poland, Hungary and other East European states to conduct their affairs "their way." 23 Gorbachev's promulgation of the Sinatra doctrine was the obituary of the Warsaw Pact as it had been structured from 1955 to 1989. Gerasimov's casual explanation of Gorbachev's historic declaration was delivered with a nonchalance worthy of Sinatra himself. But a reference to T. S. Eliot might have been more appropriate: the East European empire of the Soviet Union ended not with a bang but a whimper. The end of the Warsaw Pact As an alliance of ruling parties, the Warsaw Pact had pursued the security interests of regimes supported by Soviet military power. The previous security policies could not possibly endure beyond the collapse of the communist parties that had endorsed these policies. With the collapse of the fraternal parties noted by Gorbachev in his speech of early December, 1989 the entire interlocking system of military doctrine, alliance agencies and force postures began to disintegrate during 1990, leading to the Pact's dissolution in Spring 1991. After October 27, 1989 the Warsaw Pact could have reflected the essentially limited objectives of strikes against enemy aircraft carriers and other surface ships, consonant with the modest technological capabilities of the fleet and with the perception of naval operations as being peripheral to combat on land. Apparently the decision was made to concentrate the bulk of the best of the Navy's operational ASW platforms closer to the homeland rather than to disperse them throughout the oceans in an essentially fruitless search for difficult-to-locate US SSBNs, which at the time carried missiles having a 4,600 kilometer range. This decision to concentrate forces in the maritime regions abutting the USSR probably reflected operational decisions reached in the late 1960s or early 1970s, which remain applicable today. Soviet doctrine came to acknowledge the possibility that future wars would not necessarily be short and decisive, nor necessarily involve the immediate use of nuclear weapons, but could involve a protracted non-nuclear phase

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of combat. Moreover, this shift of ASW assets toward Soviet territory coincided with the shift of SSBN deployment areas to more protected regions. At this juncture, Soviet views on the nature of a future war, and methods for waging it, represented the first of several important refinements to Soviet military doctrine and strategy. A new role for the Soviet Navy The Navy reasserted itself as Soviet military planners reevaluated the nature of war in the 1970s. Soviet strategy accepted that war could begin conventionally, and that it would not necessarily become global. 10 This evolution in strategic thought had a direct impact on the development and use of the Navy. Naval wartime missions had to be more flexibly defined if they were to be performed under either conventional and nuclear conditions, and naval platforms had to be designed to operate in forward areas for sustained periods. Soviet recognition and elaboration of the concept of a non-nuclear conventional phase is significant for several reasons. Among these is the imperative to avoid (and to prevent) enemy nuclear attacks against Soviet territory and against Warsaw Pact forces conducting operations in the continental theaters on the Soviet periphery. The Soviets also apparently attempted to correct a major shortcoming in their planning, which had not incorporated the possibility of extended conventional operations, and which had not considered the impact on operational requirements for Warsaw Pact theater forces. Moreover, the issue of controlling nuclear use once the threshold had been crossed was not (and still is not) resolved. By planning for extended conventional operations, Soviet military theorists could, in effect, put off the need to confront the escalation issue. The evolution of Soviet strategy and planning for non-nuclear war has directly affected naval force planning. The most likely wartime tasks of the Soviet Navy are circumscribed by these formalized views on strategy, which also emphasize the interaction of all services. Current Soviet planning for conventional operations in Europe, and the Navy's potential role, may indicate a radical departure from the strategic missions that were paramount in the 1970s and 1980s. Through the late 1980s, Soviet military strategy focused on three types of strategic military action: strategic nuclear operations by the Strategic Rocket Forces, ballistic missile submarines, and Long-Range Aviation; strategic operations in continental and oceanic theaters, where naval forces would conduct both joint and independent actions; and operations to defend against enemy aerospace attack. Soviet strategy for theater warfare assumed a cohesive Soviet/Warsaw Pact that would operate according to a unified plan of action.

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The disintegration of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe and the ramifications of the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact jeopardize the fundamental concepts for Soviet theater strategy far more deeply that even the 1987 adoption of a "defensive doctrine" by the Warsaw Pact. Thus, the Navy, along with the Soviet Armed Forces as a whole, faces the prospect of a completely redefined wartime mission, especially with respect to the general purpose forces operating in support of land-based theater forces. To date, the Soviets apparently do not anticipate a radical departure in Soviet strategic force operations, even in the event of a negotiated fifty percent reduction in strategic offensive systems. Therefore, Soviet SSBNs would retain their traditional missions. Whereas in the past, the Navy would have been used in continental theaters jointly with Warsaw Pact ground and air forces and elements of the Polish and East German navies in a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict, the Navy's future role in these areas probably should assume: no joint operations; protection of Soviet (as opposed to Warsaw Pact) territory; and defense and control of Soviet maritime zones contiguous to Soviet territory. It still would be accurate, none the less, to define the Navy's principal nonstrategic mission as one of support to land-based theater force operations: It is believed that naval assistance to ground forces is most effective within the framework of a unified operation in a continental TVD, where ground forces must play the principal role and the Navy (and other branches of the armed forces) must aid in achieving the operation's objectives.11 Support would include gunfire, amphibious landings, transporting troops and materiel, protecting coastal sea lines of communications, and engaging any enemy naval and maritime forces in the area.12 In addition, naval special forces may act against coastal targets such as ports, maritime intelligence collection, as well as against command, control, and communications (C3) sites and other naval facilities. Defining naval force operations in oceanic theaters becomes much more ambiguous as Soviet military strategy evolves. Traditional planning called for naval forces to be used jointly with air forces against US carrier battle groups, for interdiction of critical sea lanes, and for hunting down US SSBNs. Under these conditions, the Soviet Navy would have established defensive perimeters which Western analysts have characterized as encompassing two areas: an inner "sea-control" zone where Soviet forces probably expected to control the ocean's surface and the air above it, and an outer sea-control zone which probably was viewed as too distant for long-term, complete Soviet control (at least in the initial period of war) but not so distant that the Soviet Navy could not have contested an opponent's attempt at long-term control.

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Immediately beyond these sea-control zones would be the "sea-denial" zone - ocean areas that the Navy would attempt to turn into "no-man's water," where neither the Soviet Navy nor opposing naval forces would be able to retain control during a protracted, non-nuclear conflict at sea. It is uncertain as to exactly how naval planners defined the outer limits of this zone. From the Soviet perspective, it would have been ideal if Soviet naval and air forces could prevent US aircraft carriers, other surface ships, and submarines from approaching close enough to launch either aircraft (on a one-way mission) or land-attack cruise missiles against the USSR. This would mean attacking US forces as far as 1,200 to 1,500 nautical miles from Soviet territory - an extremely ambitious undertaking. The evolution of a sea-control/sea-denial perimeter concept developed in Western analyses as the result of observing Soviet naval operating patterns and force acquisition decisions over a period of two decades. It seemed to capture the essence of Soviet naval behavior: naval forces had the primary mission of strategic defense of the homeland and defense of ballistic missile submarines ("sea control"), and the secondary responsibility for extended defense against and disruption of US reinforcement efforts ("sea denial"). Although the inner and outer limits of these maritime defense perimeters undoubtedly will change as Soviet strategy adjusts to radical changes in the European landscape, the Navy's role in strategic defense is probably secure. Force reductions and reorientation of fleet missions will influence how the perimeter boundaries are defined, but the Navy's longstanding strategic defense mission is certainly consistent with the new Soviet military doctrine and should continue to endure. Soviet naval forces and fleet capabilities The Soviet Navy operates out of four fleet areas: in the northwest USSR on the Kola Peninsula, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, and the Pacific Ocean. It also maintains forces at the Leningrad Naval Base and the Caspian Sea Flotilla within the USSR, and from 1979 to 1989 it operated its only foreign base at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. For the first time in decades, the Navy may be faced with significant adjustments in fleet organization. The retirement of GOLF II ballistic missile submarines (late 1950s generation) from the Baltic Sea Fleet, as well as elimination of obsolete platforms such as the WHISKEY class attack submarine, will alter the size and structure of the fleets. In addition, the Soviets have begun the process of departing from Cam Ranh Bay, including the transfer back to the Soviet Union of long-range aircraft, surface ships, and submarines that operated primarily out of the Pacific Ocean Fleet. It is not yet clear how the abandonment of Cam Ranh will affect the Pacific

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Ocean Fleet's ability to sustain forces on station in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. The decision to withdraw may foreshadow a shift in Soviet naval deployments where patrols in forward regions either cease or are substantially reduced. 13 The current four-fleet structure none the less should remain effective for the near term, at least, precisely because it affords the Soviet Union protection against any sector of potential sea-based attack. Furthermore, as long as the US maintains naval bases in forward areas - such as the Pacific, Mediterranean, and North Atlantic - the Soviet Navy will continue to argue it represents the first line of defense against attack from the sea. A decade of improvements in and modernization of naval force capabilities has had a direct impact on the Navy's ability to operate within the theaters that each fleet supports. Beginning in the late 1970s, Soviet ships and submarines have become larger and more sophisticated, with much greater sustainability and firepower than their predecessors. For example, the 37,000-ton KIEV class VTOL aircraft carriers were not only the first fixed-wing carriers in the Soviet Navy, but also its largest-ever surface combatants. The 25,000-ton nuclear-powered KIROV battle cruisers are the heaviest combatants other than aircraft carriers found in modern navies. New Soviet conventionally-powered cruisers now average 12,000 tons displacement and destroyers about 8,000 compared to roughly 8,000 and 4,000 tons respectively for units produced in the early 1970s. Both the 25,000 tons submerged displacement TYPHOON ballistic missile submarine and the 14,000-ton OSCAR antiship cruise missile submarine are respectively the largest strategic and general purpose submersibles ever built. Supplementing these sea-based platforms are air-to-surface missileequipped BACKFIRE bombers, which have nearly double the radius of earlier land-based naval anti-ship aircraft. In short, it is no longer appropriate to regard the Soviet Navy as an expendable force. In any future conflict, especially one in which the Soviets would strive to keep combat at the conventional level, naval forces require sustainability, particularly since the Navy has a critical mission: that is, guarding Moscow's sea-based strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. Until the early 1970s, Soviet SSBNs were probably intended to participate in both the initial and follow-on strikes of a strategic nuclear war. But as the Soviets expanded their land-based arsenal throughout the 1970s, military planners contemplated retaining a sizeable SSBN strategic missile reserve force. Indeed, these SSBNs would strive for "maximum preservation of concealment" during this initial period. To increase SSBN "combat stability," an array of naval forces will be assigned to protect SSBN combat patrol areas from Western ASW forces. These secure strategic nuclear assets ensure that, despite even a scenario in which an

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enemy might launch a strategic strike without warning, the Soviets will always be assured a residual capability to respond. 14 Soviet SSBNs are among Moscow's most survivable strategic forces (along with land-based mobile missiles). As the more modern DELTA and TYPHOON classes have been deployed, and as the YANKEE class is dismantled to comply with SALT provisions, the percentage of SSBNs conducting patrols in exposed regions off the US coast has been substantially reduced. To provide a reliable strategic reserve, these submarines now operate regularly in protected areas where they are far less vulnerable to US and NATO ASW forces. From these locations, SSBNs are within missile range of their target set in the United States, Western Europe, and the Far East. In either a conventional or nuclear war, most of these submarines will be deployed to areas protected by general purpose naval forces. Indeed, the most modern and capable of the Navy's ASW assets will not be out on the high seas attempting to seek out and destroy US SSBNs. Instead, as the US Defense Department has pointed out, they will be retained generally near or in the maritime approaches to the USSR in order to protect Soviet ballistic missile submarines from highly capable Western ASW forces.15 The Soviet Navy thus has entered the 1990s equipped with the most adaptive and powerful fleet in its history - a fleet capable of accommodating changes in structure potentially resulting from arms control and economic constraints, as well as changes in Soviet military strategy. Current plans for military "restructuring" and for reevaluating Soviet warfighting requirements undoubtedly affect naval planning. As part of planning a future fleet, the Soviets carefully examine how forces can be used most effectively to accomplish key wartime missions. Perhaps one of the most important issues raised in The Navy is its characterization of future naval missions as either "vitally important" or as "alternative." While it is unclear whether this terminology has been adopted officially in Soviet naval planning, the categorization might well affect naval resource allocation in the longer term. The distinction between "vitally important" and "alternative" missions implies that in a fiscallyconstrained or arms control-constrained planning environment, mission tradeoffs are necessary. Thus, planning must account for distinctions in mission criticality: Missions customarily are subdivided into those vitally important for the state and having a scope and level which cannot be reduced and alternative missions which can be adjusted in the process of coordinating missions with allocated resources.16 The Soviet Navy could follow several directions given today's capabilities

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and planning environment. Exploring these alternative postures illuminates the range of potential future naval missions in wartime. Alternative paths for Soviet naval strategy* Roughly a decade ago, an interpretation began to prevail among Western analysts as to how the Soviet Navy would operate both before and during the initial period of a war involving NATO. This view postulated that the SSBNs would be dispersed to protected deployment areas prior to the start of combat and would then prepare to launch their missiles as quickly as possible. While some might participate in an initial strike, many missile submarines would remain in reserve. Ballistic missile submarines could be vulnerable to conventional attrition from Western attack submarines, surface ships, and aircraft. But dispersed submarines would be relatively invulnerable in zones controlled by friendly forces. The Navy would attempt to control all or most of the Kara, Barents, Norwegian, Greenland, Baltic, Black, Japan, and Okhotsk Seas, as well as the waters adjacent to the Kamchatka Peninsula. It would also seek to deny its enemies access to the waters extending some 2,000 kilometers or more from Soviet territory. All (or nearly all) units in the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets would remain within the defensive perimeter; so too would "virtually all available Northern and Pacific Ocean Fleet surface combatants [and] combat aircraft, and about 75 percent of available attack submarines." 17 The number of units expected to remain within the perimeter would mean that vital Western sea lanes of communication (or SLOCs) "will initially be threatened by relatively few forces." 18 A more potent threat probably would arise only during a protracted war where SLOCs became critical to the outcome. This assessment assumed that most Soviet naval forces deployed within the defense perimeter would simultaneously perform numerous tasks, including: Dedicated escort of some (possibly most) SSBNs Defense-in-depth of approaches to SSBN deployment areas Augmenting communications paths for SSBN command and control Early warning of and defense against enemy bomber and cruise missile attacks * The author gratefully acknowledges the substantial contributions of Dr. Donald Daniel of the Naval War College to this section. His writings have described the two analytical views that emerged during the 1970s.

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Destroying enemy aircraft carriers and land-attack cruise missile ships or submarines Protecting coastal sea, land, and air lines of communication, and Providing amphibious, gunfire, logistical, transportation and other support to ground forces operating in coastal regions. Many Western analysts reacted skeptically when this paradigm of Soviet naval behavior was first advanced - these traditionalists expected a major Soviet assault on the sea lanes from the first moment of the next global conflict, reminiscent of the North Atlantic convoy battles of World War II. Lending credence to their view was the Navy's increased peacetime operating tempo since the mid-1960s, the cutbacks suffered by the US Navy in the early through mid-1970s, and the improvements in Soviet capabilities that posed serious threats not only to the sea lanes but also to aircraft carriers and other high-value surface combatants. Nevertheless, the strategically defensive orientation was accepted as the dominant view of Soviet naval behavior in wartime. In contrast with alternative explanations, it seemed corroborated by Soviet naval writings, by hardware developments, and by deployment and exercise patterns. Most resistance to this assessment of Soviet operating philosophy stemmed from its inconsistency with US attitudes and expectations about the use of naval power: in essence, the Soviet Navy did not conform to generally-held Western assumptions of great power navy behavior - that is, forward deployments into open regions for offensive operations. In addition, a defense orientation at sea seemed to be inconsistent with Soviet military strategy for operations in continental theaters, which postulated large-scale offensive operations executed to the depths of the European continent. Although the new view was widely held, many analysts remained unconvinced. Adopting more of a "worst-case" analytical approach, they stressed the possibility that the Navy would assume an offensive posture based on submarine operations, in order to hotly contest the sea lanes from the onset of war. The case for a Soviet naval offensive Several arguments supported the view that a militarily prudent basis for Western planning during the era of NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation would be to anticipate a major Soviet naval offensive (at least in selected regions), particularly during a prolonged conventional conflict. Since the Soviets would have sought to keep a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict at the conventional level, and Soviet military strategy explicitly acknowledged that such a war could have lasted weeks or months, a major effort to interdict the sea lanes, executed in the initial period of the war, could have

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seriously disrupted NATO resupply operations. The viability of NATO's strategy would have depended largely on implementing the Rapid Reinforcement Plan (RRP) before the outbreak of war. Political or technical delays were plausible; if further impeded by a major Soviet SLOC offensive, the impact on NATO's ability to prosecute a war might have been devastating. This scenario seemed to be reinforced by Soviet writings in the 1980s, which seemed indicative of a heightened interest in contesting the sea lanes. According to some US analysts, this approach is evident in the quantity and the content of relevant articles in the official Navy journal, Morskoy Sbornik. As analyst David Hildebrant explains, the "interdiction mission was a topic of lively discussion, perhaps even debate, in the pages of Morskoy Sbornik between 1981 and 1984, with some . . . authors appearing to refer to it as 'strategic'." 19 He adds that the topic seemed to languish subsequently, until it received renewed focus in the 1987 public statements of the Navy's recently appointed Commander in Chief, Fleet Admiral V. N. Chernavin. In addition, The Navy occasionally expresses the view that NATO's sea lanes are particularly important. It also predicts that "the trend toward an expansion of warfare on the ocean and sea LOCs and an increase in its significance will be maintained in the future as well." 20 While the characterization of the "trend" may be arguable under current conditions, the discussion does indicate that interdiction campaigns do at least remain an item of controversy. Undoubtedly, the SLOC issue reasserted itself with the last year's two-part article on "The Struggle for the Sea Lanes of Communication: Lessons of Wars and the Modern Era." 21 Fleet Admiral Chernavin, the author, defines a set of criteria for attempting to measure the beneficial effects of SLOC interdiction on operations in an adjacent continental theater. However, he concludes that "At the present time, views on the role and place of sea lanes of communication in modern war are being reviewed" - a curiously noncommittal and ambiguous commentary on the potential significance of SLOC campaigns in a future conflict. Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of an offensive-oriented strategy in the future is that a large-scale early threat to the sea lanes, evidenced by the approach of many Soviet submarines during a crisis, may be the most viable option available to the Soviet Navy to pre-empt or "outflank" the US Navy's Maritime Strategy and put NATO's navies on the defensive. Since US planners originally designed the Maritime Strategy to capitalize on the strategic defensive posture of the Soviet Navy, the most effective method for the Soviets to disrupt US naval strategy may be to take the offensive early in a conflict. NATO naval forces would confront direct naval opposition in the region the Soviets have designated as sea-denial zones.

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Central to this argument is the assertion that unless the Soviet Navy is tied down within its own defense perimeter NATO will lose the SLOC war for lack of enough escorts to guard its transports. A Soviet naval offensive strategy also cannot be ruled out because the Navy clearly has sufficient numbers of attack submarines to mount a viable SLOC threat. The Northern Fleet (which would have to provide nearly all the units assigned to the anti-SLOC operations in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean) possesses some 75 nuclear-powered and 40 diesel-powered cruise missile or torpedo firing submarines. Since open-ocean ASW is highly labor-intensive (involving detection, classification, localization, and attack), NATO's navies would be straining to deal with the approximately 100 Soviet submarines which probably would be available at the start of a war. Soviet forces are slowly but surely improving their capabilities to defend the maritime defense perimeter. The Soviet Navy now has large aircraft carriers (three TBILISI class units), quiet submarines (the AKULA and SIERRA classes), and formidable anti-ship cruise missile-firing platforms (such as the OSCAR submarine, with 24 missiles; the KIROV cruisers, with 20 missiles; and the long-range BACKFIRE bomber). The Soviet Navy also is improving its surveillance capabilities to monitor activities in the maritime defense perimeter. As a result, fewer submarines may be needed to defend the perimeter. Those submarines released from such duties could instead be assigned to sink enemy ships operating beyond the Soviet defensive perimeter. Additionally, three developments could possibly release some tactical units now assigned to protect SSBNs, allowing them to operate outside the defense perimeter. One is that Soviet SSBNs have become better able to protect themselves. They are quieter, can patrol under ice, and have such long-range missiles that their potential launch areas can be located in constricted regions adjacent to the Soviet coast. A second prospective development is that there will be substantially fewer SSBNs to protect if a strategic arms control agreement limiting the number of SLBM warheads is concluded. Such an agreement might entail a reduction in the SSBN inventory from 63 to between 14 and 34. A third development is the deployment of land based mobile SS-25 and SS-24 ICBMs. If these missiles are seen as being less vulnerable than SSBNs and as having a more reliable communications "tether" to the Soviet General Staff, then SSBNs may no longer be the predominant strategic nuclear reserve, to be protected at all costs. In sum, several related arguments have contributed to the conclusion that the Navy likely would conduct an offensively-oriented campaign at the outset of any future conflict between NATO and the Soviet Union. The

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arguments supporting this case focus on: (1) changes in Soviet military doctrine and strategy emphasizing the possibility of protracted conventional conflict; (2) increased attention to the anti-SLOC mission in naval writings; (3) the logic of "outflanking" the US Maritime Strategy by invalidating its premise of a strategically defensive Soviet Navy; (4) a general purpose submarine inventory whose size poses the threat of an anti-SLOC campaign; and (5) changes in Soviet capabilities which could lessen the number of submarines needed to protect the maritime defense perimeter and the SSBN deployment areas which such a perimeter would contain. While logically consistent, this assessment of Soviet naval operations runs counter to the prevailing view of a Soviet naval defensive orientation. The case for Soviet naval defense The Navy's historical defensive character One central feature of the Russian and Soviet military tradition is the use of navies in a strategically defensive role, which stems from the historical emphasis on large-scale land warfare. This defensive orientation reflects the belief that the country's security is intertwined with events and conditions in the lands adjacent to the USSR's European and Asian peripheries. The threat of nuclear attack gave Soviet military thinking a new intercontinental dimension, but, with the possible exception of the Khrushchev years, the Eurasian continent has remained the focal point of Soviet military planning. Indeed, the events of 1989 strongly suggest that the Eurasian landmass will continue to be at the center of Soviet security concerns through the next decade. In line with this orientation is a strategic planning process which evaluates the Navy's potential contribution in comparatively narrow terms. The Navy is only one of five military services, the others being the Strategic Rocket Forces, the Ground Forces, the Air Forces, and the Air Defense Forces. The distribution of high-level military appointments underscores which service is the most prominent. All officers who have gone on to become Minister of Defense or First Deputy Ministers, including the highly influential Chiefs of the General Staff, and all Chiefs of the Main Political Directorate have come from the Ground Forces. Even the present CINCs of the Strategic Rocket Forces and the Air Defense Forces, Generals Y. P. Maksimov and Ivan Tret'yak, came from Ground Forces commands. In contrast to the US ICBM force, operated by the Air Force's Strategic Air Command, the Strategic Rocket Forces are an independent service formed from the artillery arm of the Ground Forces. Its traditions,

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views, and insignia reflect its origins. As for the Air Defense Forces, they have been commanded by a Ground Forces or an Air Forces officer since first formally constituted in 1948. All CINCs of the theater commands have been Ground Forces officers. Finally, whereas the other services have just a few officers on the CPSU Central Committee, the Ground Forces usually have ten to twenty. In contrast to the Ground Forces, the Navy is the least influential service, a fact which has long frustrated its leaders. Such frustration characterizes Gorshkov's writings. In a 1975 book extolling the virtues of maritime power, he distinguished between "fleet against fleet" and "fleet against shore" combat. He stated that "fleet against shore" combat had become dominant because of naval nuclear land attack systems. Curiously, however, he then placed all "fleet against fleet" tasks, including attacking enemy naval and merchant ships, under the "fleet against shore" heading. 22 Gorshkov's logic is confusing until one realizes that he was trying to justify traditional "fleet against fleet" tasks to an audience overwhelmingly concerned with land warfare. He pointedly addressed that audience in the 1979 edition of The Sea Power of the State in which a section on "The Strategic Employment of the Fleet" was added. His foreword to The Navy, probably written in 1987, noted a "smoothing over of differences" on the roles of the services in combat. 23 Nevertheless, he and the authors continually argue that the Navy has a vital role in three critical strategic missions - repelling enemy aerospace attack, suppressing enemy militaryeconomic potential, and destroying the enemy's armed forces. It should not be surprising that many of the Soviet Navy's wartime missions are ancillary to those of other services and commands. SSBNs (and probably land-attack cruise missile submarines) would, of course, be under the direct control of the General Staff. CINCs of the theater commands on the Soviet periphery would in turn have operational control of most of the general purpose naval units deployed in waters adjacent to these regions, possibly out to hundreds of kilometers. Similarly, naval units involved in homeland air defense would probably function as part of a coordinated strategic aerospace defense network together with the Air Defense Forces and elements of the Air Forces. The entire network would respond to the CINC of the Air Defense Forces, who is now a Ground Forces officer. Only general purpose naval units operating in distant ocean theaters (to interdict carrier groups, for instance) would remain under the operational control of the Navy. Unless the benefits seemed overwhelming, Soviet strategic planners would probably not be inclined to commit large numbers of naval units to oceanic theaters, where they would be beyond the protection of land-based aviation.

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planning

The traditional concept for the theater-strategic operation, which postulated a conventional offensive deep into NATO territory, has been rejected at least verbally by virtually all Soviet political and military spokesmen since 1987. The consistent theme of adopting a defensive strategy to repel "aggression" and restore prewar borders (necessitating both defensive and offensive tactics and operations) has been reflected in conventional arms control proposals, unilateral troop reductions, and training. Although it is not yet clear how the General Staff will redefine the theater operation to correspond to emerging, reduced conventional force structures, future Soviet planning for theater war will be based on initial strategic defensive operations, followed by a counteroffensive. In this respect, the Soviet Navy's traditional commitment to defense should find it well-prepared to adapt to the defensive emphasis in Soviet military thought, which has gradually emerged since the early 1980s. Soviet military planners apparently anticipate that defensive operations will dominate the initial period of a future war, 24 and under these circumstances the Soviet Navy will have to defend the maritime defense perimeters, to impede US reinforcement of Eurasian allies, and to protect Soviet SSBNs. The demands on the Navy to accomplish multiple tasks, and the uncertainty over the longer-term success of preventing US resupply efforts, collectively suggest that Moscow probably has serious reservations about mounting a large-scale SLOC interdiction campaign from the outset of a conflict. Such an operation would require large numbers of resources and would have little prospect of being sustained indefinitely. Given the relatively limited period during which the mission might be effective, the Soviet Navy may choose to allocate these resources toward other missions having greater prospects for success - such as protection of SSBN deployment areas, and attacks on individual, high-payoff targets such as US aircraft carriers. Nevertheless, attacks by Soviet submarines and aircraft on convoys should be anticipated. It has not been unusual for the Navy to maintain a few submarines in the Indian Ocean or off the coast of West Africa. At the outbreak of war, any units in these forward areas could strike immediately at oil tankers. And with the support of clients such as Angola, they could pose a threat to the tanker lines at least for several days into the initial period of the conflict. Ships carrying war materials from the United States to Europe would also be attacked on a selected basis. While Soviet naval planners may choose to assign some submarines to such a SLOC campaign, if only to disperse NATO ASW forces, it is doubtful that in the longer run many submarines would be spared for this

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task. Moscow must expect to lose some of them as they try to penetrate NATO ASW barriers on their way to the Atlantic, as well as when they return home. While the Soviet Navy has a large number of general purpose submarines (260 by their own count, including 113 that are nuclear-powered),25 this number probably is still not sufficient to conduct multiple tasks successfully, especially when one involves a submarine-intensive SLOC interdiction operation. In light of the Soviet Union's worsening economic plight, Soviet submarine construction will surely drop in the 1990s. The Soviets built about 75 submarines a year in the mid-1950s, about 20 a year in the mid-1960s, about 12 to 14 a year in the mid-1970s, and about half of that number in the mid-1980s. Soviet naval spokesmen have stated that increased submarine capabilities will come from better quality - not from greater quantity. 26 Gorbachev's attempt to reorient Soviet economic priorities could mean that the 1990s may be especially austere for the Navy, as the least influential of the services, and that the pace of new ship and submarine construction will drop. A role even closer to home for the Navy may be in the offing if the Soviet leadership concludes that the US Maritime Strategy is likely to frustrate the Navy's plans for protecting the maritime defense perimeter. Soviet planners, who generally are conservative in their assessments, undoubtedly see a perimeter ready to be pierced. The Maritime Strategy emphasizes forcing potential gaps, and the recent buildup of the US Navy (with over 100 ships added to the fleet in the 1980s) underscores an increased capability to do so. Ambitious US and NATO naval exercises in the Norwegian Sea show a determination to bring the war at sea to the Soviet Navy, and the Soviets perceive an intent on the part of the US Navy to challenge not only the outer sea-control zone, but also the more sacrosanct inner sea-control zone near Soviet territory. As a result, Soviet planners actually have few incentives to send units against distant SLOCs in the early period of a war. Rather, they may well be more inclined to assign the largest proportion of their forces to the more traditional defensive missions. Indeed, since 1985 there has been a steady decrease in the average number of units deployed in distant waters. Similarly, major exercises have been conducted closer to home since 1985. A former Director of Naval Intelligence addressed possible reasons for these changes: We believe [they]... reflect - among other things - economic constraints; increased emphasis on the Navy's role in close-in, combined arms operations; and/or an intention to develop more flexible employment options for naval forces and to increase their combat readiness to counter the US Maritime Strategy's deployment of forces near Soviet territory and SSBN operating areas at the outset of hostilities.27

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The Soviets themselves have acknowledged these trends in naval force deployments, offering as one explanation a desire to adopt a less provocative peacetime posture in order to bring their Navy into line with the "new thinking" on national security.28 While there may be fewer Soviet SSBNs in the future, thereby reducing the number which need to be protected, each SSBN will become much more important - especially under an arms control agreement which greatly reduces the available number of ballistic missile warheads. 29 Devoting general purpose forces to protecting SSBNs may be more important than ever - especially in light of an increase in the threat to the Soviet silo-based ICBM force as the US deploys the hard-target capable Trident II SLBM to complement the Peacekeeper ICBM. In addition, the prospective deployment of the B-2 bomber and radar-imaging satellites can only increase Soviet concern regarding the potential vulnerability of land-based mobile missiles, thereby reinforcing the need to ensure the survivability of their sea-based strategic missile force into the next century. Another mission for Soviet submarines would be to conduct strategic ASW against Western SSBNs. But because the prospects of success are so poor, it is expected that few Soviet submarines would be assigned this task. Should the Soviets ever achieve a breakthrough in submarine detection and tracking, then that development alone might justify a radical shift in Soviet naval strategy. The prospect that Western attack submarines, as the US Maritime Strategy implies, might successfully track and destroy a significant number of Soviet SSBNs must be a source of considerable concern. The Navy, however, discusses the possibility that the Soviets may eventually be able to mount an equivalent threat to US SSBNs. Under the rubric of "repelling an enemy aerospace attack," the authors state that the increasing threat (resulting from improvements in Western SSBNs, SLBMs, and submarine-launched land-attack cruise missiles) means that: In the nearest foreseeable future, as prospects for the development of submarines and their weapons show, the mission of combatting them may rise to the level of a national mission, and then one may speak of the antisubmarine defense of the nation in the same manner as we speak of the air defense of the nation.30 This mission is described as one which encompasses a large portion of the globe since, the authors insist, the range of the SLBMs that the Poseidon and Trident SSBNs carry enables them to patrol up to 11,000 kilometers away from their targets. While acknowledging that "aviation, air defense forces, missile forces, and space systems" will share in the mission, the authors also note that: The principal burden of combatting groupings of missile armed submarines rests with the naval forces in as much as they are the only branch of the armed forces

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capable of overcoming enemy opposition, entering into immediate contact with the strategic weapons platform, accomplishing lengthy tracking of them while it is still peacetime, and destroying them with their weapons immediately at the outbreak of war.31 On the other hand, despite obvious Soviet interest in this vital mission, there seems to be no evidence of an actual or foreseeable Soviet capability to threaten a significant number of the US SSBNs at sea. Indeed, the discussion in The Navy has a clear tenor of advocacy to it, especially when the authors suggest that "antisubmarine defense of the nation" is a mission comparable in significance to national aerospace defense. They may be arguing that, in an era of tight budgets, funding for ASW is at least - if not more - important than for aerospace defense. No doubt there are those in the Air Defense Forces arguing just as vocally for a Soviet-style Strategic Defense Initiative and for systems to counter the B-2, "stealthy" cruise missiles, and Advanced Technology Fighters. In sum, there is probably only one development which might well result in a significant shift in the Soviet Navy's likely wartime posture of strategic defense - a breakthrough in ASW technology. But such a breakthrough is unlikely and, in any case, new ASW systems probably could be fielded only relatively slowly due to unavoidable shrinkage in the Soviet defense budget for the foreseeable future. Prospects for change in Soviet naval missions The fundamentally defensive orientation of contemporary Soviet naval strategy became widely accepted by Western analysts in the 1980s as the most likely basis for predicting future Soviet naval developments and for characterizing Soviet naval operations in the initial period of a conventional NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict. The new Soviet military doctrine for the 1990s, emphasizing war prevention and defensive military operations should war occur, is a good indicator that the Navy's defensive orientation should persist. However, how the Soviet Navy will evolve over the next decade is not at all clear. Developments in three key areas will dictate the future direction of Soviet naval force structures and missions: Moscow's view of the Navy's contribution to achieving foreign policy goals; the potential impact of naval arms control; and Soviet military planning assumptions regarding the nature of the future threat to the Soviet Union. The foreign policy agenda Gorbachev's foreign policy agenda seeks reduced international tensions

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and a substantially reduced military posture designed to reinforce this goal. Moscow has calculated that a visible naval peacetime presence in international waters, as was maintained throughout the mid-1970s to mid1980s, no longer serves the foreign policy interests of the state. The ensuing reduction in naval forces' peacetime operational deployments, evident over the last several years, has culminated in the Soviets initiating the withdrawal from its only overseas base at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. Moreover, the numbers of ships deployed to locations such as the Mediterranean Sea and South Atlantic also have been declining. This shift in the Navy's peacetime deployment trends, a phenomenon of the Gorbachev period, probably should be attributed to Gorbachev's recognition that a highly-visible naval force not only contradicted stated foreign policy goals of reducing levels of international hostility and encouraging the emergence of nuclear-free operating zones, but also undermined Moscow's criticism of the US Maritime Strategy. A reduced operating tempo effectively has eliminated any inherent contradictions between policy and practice. Admiral K. V. Makarov, Chief of the Naval Main Staff, has noted that "we have significantly reduced the number of long-range cruises. Such actions are a continuation of our state's policy aimed at reducing tension and normalizing the military-political situation." 32 Moscow now apparently views the Navy's peacetime role less as an instrument of projecting power and more as a visible indicator of a less provocative - and more defensive - military posture. Consequently, the Navy's deployment patterns over the next several years should involve close-to-home training and exercises, and a limited annual number of foreign port visits. Naval arms control and Soviet expectations There is no question that the future of the Soviet Navy - its size, missions, and relevance in Soviet military planning - hinges on the outcome of potential naval arms control agreements. Arms control negotiations across a full spectrum of forces and capabilities, from strategic offensive and defensive systems to conventional forces and nuclear testing, are a linchpin in the Soviet foreign and domestic policy agendas. Reductions in standing forces and potential superpower military confrontations, are essential to Gorbachev's reform program. Comprehensive and predictable reductions in defense budgets over the foreseeable future are preferred but not guaranteed without substantial, negotiated force cuts. Although a strategic arms reduction agreement would result in the elimination of anywhere from 14 to 34 Soviet SSBNs (depending on Soviet

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preference for deploying warheads on land- or sea-based ballistic missiles), this represents the only element of naval forces currently being negotiated for reductions. No other naval forces, including general purpose naval forces and long-range sea-launched cruise missiles, are on the arms control agenda. At best, discussions on SLCMs during the START negotiations have focused on future deployment levels, acceptable ranges, and agreements to periodically declare the size of the deployed force. Where the Soviet Navy is concerned, several pivotal force planning issues are at stake, depending on future developments in the naval arms control agenda. 33 If the Navy is to continue with the mission of strategic homeland defense, and naval forces are not reduced, the Navy probably will assume primary responsibility for forward defense against the landattack cruise missile threat while retaining the more traditional warfighting missions of anti-carrier and anti-submarine warfare in sea-control zones. Moscow's concern about the preponderance of Western naval forces in general, and land-attack cruise missiles in particular, undoubtedly reflects a genuine fear that a key element of military power where the Soviets perceive themselves vulnerable to Western superiority 34 may not be limited by any forthcoming arms agreement. Such a prospect would raise doubts about the longer-term implications of adopting a defensive military strategy. This issue was addressed directly by Marshal Akhromeyev, former Chief of the Soviet General Staff and a senior advisor to Gorbachev: If we actually reduce [strategic nuclear and conventional] forces on a reciprocal basis, while the US naval forces and US naval bases surrounding the USSR remain intact, the military threat for the USSR will increase and the position of the Soviet Union in the world will deteriorate.35 Akhromeyev went on to cite President Gorbachev's October 1989 address to the Helsinki conference, where Gorbachev stated that without naval force reductions, the "transition to nonoffensive defense will simply not take place unless this problem is resolved." Naval force reductions, depending on their scope and the systems affected, probably would restrict the Navy's ability to extend the maritime defense perimeter into the sea-denial zone. For that reason, it appears inconceivable that any dramatic unilateral naval force reductions would be undertaken by the Soviet Navy, precisely because its ability to operate in the sea-denial zone is central to the forward defense against land-attack cruise missile carriers. As long as SLCMs and major Western surface ships remain unconstrained by naval arms limitation accords, the Soviet Navy should be expected to retain the mission of strategic defense at extended perimeters, as well as purchase the forces and capabilities necessary to provide this defense.

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Naval missions for the 1990s will be determined primarily on the basis of the General Staff's assessment of the future military threat to the Soviet Union. General M. A. Gareyev, a leading Soviet military theorist and a Deputy Chief of the General Staff, has described the doctrinal and strategic changes of the last few years as a response to a fundamental political reassessment that state security could not be guaranteed by the modernization or buildup of defensive or offensive weapons. Once the political aspects of doctrine were elaborated, the military-technical dimensions required reformulation. Gareyev notes that the military-technical side of doctrine determines: the character of the military threat and the ensuing task of defense, the forces necessary to accomplish these tasks, the means of conducting combat and the forces needed to repel an aggressor, and the preparation of forces through military training and education.36 At the center of internal Soviet security debates today is the issue of defining the military threat, defining the circumstances under which conflict might occur, and preparing forces to respond to that threat. The Soviet Navy's role would be to "keep key regions and positions under control through a variety of defenses," which Gareyev identifies as the main task and common objective for all defensive actions that are consistent with the principle of defense sufficiency.37 This characterization of defensive operations certainly describes the Navy's longstanding role in sea-control, assuring that high-value Soviet naval units and Soviet territorial waters remained well-defended. But Soviet military planners continue to be concerned by the prospect of surprise attack. As a result, Gareyev has emphasized that an important step in changing the nature of the military threat is "for each side to withdraw its troops to a distance that would rule out surprise attacks on the territory of adjacent states .. ."38 The currently planned conventional reductions under the CFE agreement would, in fact, involve withdrawal of troops and essentially eliminate the ability of either side to mount a surprise theater attack. However, without similar reductions in naval forces, the Soviets may continue to perceive the risk of surprise attack from the sea, especially with the deployment of land-attack cruise missiles. Ironically, the Navy's role in strategic homeland defense could require defensive operations in far-forward regions, at least until the Soviet Air Defense Forces achieve enhanced capabilities to defend against the cruise missile threat. Conclusion Current trends in Soviet military force planning, particularly the commit-

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ment to mutual force reductions, suggest that the Soviet Navy's future will show great continuity with its past - the first line of strategic homeland defense. Soviet assessments of future military threats, and the nature of a future war, envision a very active "defensive defense," one capable of protecting Soviet territory even under the most difficult and unpredictable circumstances. Whereas some portion of the Navy in the past might have conducted antiship warfare in more extended regions as part of a SLOC interdiction effort, the Navy's future role in these forward areas apparently would be to defend against and defeat Western naval land-attack cruise missile carriers. If mutual naval force reductions should occur, and SLCMs are banned or limited, the relative proportion of Soviet assets operating in the sea-denial, vice sea-control, zone in either peacetime or the initial period of war should be extremely limited. Protection of SSBNs and defense of immediate Soviet maritime borders undoubtedly will remain top-priority missions. The restructuring of Europe, the reduction in international tensions in general, and the extensive period of arms control negotiations are changing how, and to what extent, the Soviet military serves Soviet foreign and domestic interests. The desire for less provocative peacetime deployments, the deemphasis on offensive wartime operations, and force reductions and reorganization will generate changes in Soviet naval operations. However, the enduring mission of strategic homeland defense will be retained, not only because it is consistent with a defensive doctrine, but also because the Navy's modern aviation, ships, and submarines and their weapon systems are wellmatched to sea-control and territorial defense missions. Notes 1 The no longer recent Minister of Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union D. T. Yazov, outlined the rationale for necessary steps towards achieving "reliable defense sufficiency" in "On the Basis of the New Thinking," Krasnaya Zvezda [Red Star], April 13, 1989 (1st edition), 1-2. 2 N . P. V'yunenko et al., Voyenno-morskoyflot:roV', perspektivy razvitiya, ispol'zovaniye [The Navy: Its Role, Prospects for Development, and Employment] (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1988). Edited and with a foreword by former Soviet Navy Commander in Chief, Fleet Admiral of the Soviet Union S. G. Gorshkov. For an assessment of the book's implications, see "Gorshkov's Final Words: What Do They Mean?," US Naval Institute Proceedings, May 1989, 131-148. 3 The literature includes, inter alia, Theodore A. Neely and Captain Steve F. Kime, USN, "Perestroika, Doctrinal Change and the Soviet Navy," Strategic Review, Fall 1988,45-54; Norman Polmar and Ray Robinson, "What Lurks in the Soviet Navy," US Naval Institute Proceedings, February 1990, 43-48; and Michael MccGwire's two-part series on "Gorshkov's Navy," US Naval Institute Proceedings, August 1989, 44-51, and September 1989, 42-47. 4 Up until late 1990, the participants in Soviet internal debates regarding future

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directions in Soviet military policy crossed a broad spectrum of governmental and academic institutions. The following articles contain essential background on the players and issues in the debates: Raymond Garthoff, "New Thinking in Soviet Military Doctrine," The Washington Quarterly, Summer 1988, 131-158; Stephen M. Meyer, "The Sources and Prospects of Gorbachev's New Political Thinking on Security," International Security, Fall 1988, 124-163; and Gerhard Wettig, "New Thinking on Security and East-West Relations," Problems of Communism, March-April 1988, 1-14. The authors advocate that the Soviet Navy adopt three basic missions as "vitally important to the state": (1) the repelling of an enemy aerospace attack; (2) the suppression of the enemy's military-economic potential; and (3) the destruction of groupings of enemy armed forces. See The Navy, pp. 35-41. A. A. Grechko, The Armed Forces of the Soviet State, trans. US Air Force (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1975; originally published in Moscow, 1974), p. 282. S. G. Gorshkov, "Navies in War and Peace," Morskoy sbornik [Naval Digest], no. 3 (1972), 20. S. G. Gorshkov, The Sea Power of the State, 2nd edn (Moscow: Military Publishing House, 1979), chapter 4. For a brief but excellent summary of Soviet naval force development and acquisition from World War II through the 1970s, see MccGwire, "Part I: Gorshkov's Navy," pp. 44-51. See the reference to the possibility of "achieving strategic results with conventional means while maintaining readiness to repulse a nuclear strike" in L. I. Ol'shtynskiy, Vzaimodeystviye armii i flota [Coordination of the Army and the Fleet] (Moscow: Voyennoye Izdatel'stvo, 1983), p. 7. V'yunenko, et al. The Navy, p. 180. V'yunenko, et al. The Navy, p. 100. Pravda, 31 October 1989, 2nd edn, 6; as translated in FBIS-SOV-89-210, 1 November 1989, 1. V'yunenko, et al. The Navy, p. 167. Soviet Military Power: Prospects for Change (US Government Printing Office: 1989), 47. V'yunenko, et al. The Navy, p. 51. Statement of Rear Admiral William O. Studeman, US Navy, Director of Naval Intelligence, before the Seapower and Strategic and Critical Materials Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, on Intelligence Issues, 1 March 1988, 4. Studeman, Statement, p. 12. David A. Hildebrandt, "The Soviet Trend Toward Conventional Warfare and the Soviet Navy: Still No Anti-SLOC?" Master's Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Ca., June 1988, 131. James McConnell of the Center of Naval Analyses and Charles Peterson, formerly of the Center, are both regular readers of Soviet literature, and both have noted an increased emphasis on the importance of the sea lanes of communication. V'yunenko, et al. The Navy, chapter 1. V. N. Chernavin, "The Struggle for the Sea Lanes of Communication: Lessons of Wars and the Modern Era," translated in JPRS-UMA-90-007, March 23,

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25 26 27 28

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1990, 56-72. (Originally published in Morskoy Sbornik [Naval Digest], January 1990, 18-28, and February 1990, 29-40). Gorshkov, The Sea Power of the State. V'yunenko, et al. The Navy, chapter 1. M. Moiseyev, "Soviet Military Doctrine: Realization of Its Defensive Thrust," Pravda (in Russian), 13 March 1989,1st edn, 5; as translated in FBIS-SOV-89047, 13 March 1989, 1-5. Moscow New Times (in English), no. 28 (11-17 July 1989), 22-24; as reported in JPRS-UMA-89-020, 18 August 1989, 34-36. See Richard L. Haver, "Soviet Navy Perspectives," US Naval Institute Proceedings, May 1988, 238. Studeman, Statement, pp. 39-40. K. V. Makarov, "The Oceans are Conquered by the Courageous," in Voyennoe Znaniye (in Russian), no. 7 (July 1989), 2-3; as translated in JPRS-UMA-89206, 9 November 1989, 33-35. The value of each SSBN becomes that much more critical if a strategic arms control agreement is concluded, since there will be a cut of potentially more than 50 percent of the SSBN force. V'yunenko, et al. The Navy, chapter 4. V'yunenko, et al. The Navy, chapter 4. Makarov, JPRS-UMA-026, 33. Marshal of the Soviet Union S. N. Akhromeyev, former Chief of the Soviet General Staff and currently an advisor to President Gorbachev, provided testimony to the US House of Representatives on May 8,1990. He reiterated the Soviet Government's concern about the lack of progress in naval arms control discussions. In response to this testimony, US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Carlisle A. H. Trost, told the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee that he would support negotiations with the USSR to eliminate tactical nuclear weapons at sea provided the Soviet leadership agrees to put on the same negotiating table all its land- and sea-based nuclear weapons that threaten US aircraft carriers. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, continues to oppose negotiating restraints, controls, or reductions in the Navy. See The Washington Post, May 12, 1990, p. A12. The Soviets view aircraft-carrier battle groups as the key differential that gives the US and NATO naval superiority. See V. Lobov, "Potential for Attack and the Vienna Talks," Red Star, translated by FBIS-SOV-89-082, May 1, 1989, 1-2. S. Akhromeyev, "The USSR Favors Dialogue and Cooperation. But What About the United States?" in Pravda, 30 October 1989, 1st edn, 7; as reported in FBIS-SOV-89-209, 31 October 1989, 1-3. M. A. Gareyev, "The Revised Soviet Military Doctrine," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 1988, 30-34. Gareyev, "Revised Soviet Military Doctrine," p. 32. Gareyev, "Revised Soviet Military Doctrine," p. 32.

Part III

Managing the mission

7

Fought with weapons and lost by men: counter-insurgency and the lessons of Afghanistan David Ishy

The last Soviet combat unit left Afghanistan in February 1989. This ended an active Soviet military commitment to the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) (renamed the Watan Fatherland - party after the withdrawal) regime against the national rising that followed the Party's putsch in April 1978. The cost was over 13,000 Soviets killed in action and over a million Afghans dead. The war had started at the height of Brezhnev-era confidence in the power and efficacy of the Soviet military, and of the irreversibly favorable shift in the global correlation of forces. It ended with Gorbachev-era perestroika, billed as "the last hope of Socialism." The Soviet military had failed to secure victory against the people of one of the world's poorest nations. The result has an impact far beyond Afghanistan's mountains and deserts. There are many lessons behind this shift from a bullying form of Soviet confidence to a more restrained blend of introspection. The Soviets were unable to reproduce the results in Afghanistan of past political consolidation through military superiority such as they had enjoyed in Central Asia, Mongolia, and Eastern Europe. Soviet failure resulted from a lack of cumulative military successes, from theflawsin their PDPA surrogates, and from the tenacious fighting of the Afghan nation with strong international support. Failure also came from the difficulty of adapting a Soviet force configured for general war to one which might excel in counter-insurgency. There were, however, some successful adaptations, notably the Soviet special operations forces. While the Soviets never sought a purely military solution in Afghanistan once the scope of resistance became apparent, their political tools were even more limited than their military methods. Political failure^ undercut any battlefield success. In the absence of Moscow's decision to accept the costs of a protracted large-scale commitment involving all the rigors of Soviet war-fighting, the Red Army failed to deliver. None the less, Afghanistan provided the Soviet military with tactical lessons forged in combat as well as the commanders to apply them. Moreover, the new Soviet leadership recognized the high international 157

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costs and limited utility of war in the third world. The result in the 1990s may be a devaluation of forces as a Soviet Foreign policy tool, not just in Southwest Asia but on a wider canvas. The protracted war What was Soviet military intervention intended to achieve? The Soviet military force in Afghanistan served larger political purposes, both in invasion and withdrawal. Theories of Soviet intentions in Afghanistan run from a strategic grand design of exploiting perceived US global weakness to a reaction against the failings of the PDPA regime. The Soviets themselves are in some turmoil over the motivation. By the end of the 1980s, not only the Soviet press but serving Soviet military leaders had increased their criticism of the decisions that had led to invasion.1 Soviet statements, the types of troops used, and the way they were deployed showed that Moscow believed in December 1979 that a few divisions garrisoned around Afghanistan's cities would produce final results similar to those in 1956 Hungary and 1968 Czechoslovakia.2 Indeed, the Afghan invasion first appeared a clear military success. It preempted any organized resistance by the Kabul regime's military - a series of mutinies in early 1980 suggest that this may have been a real possibility and avoided many of the problems in mobilization, logistics, and troop control that had surfaced during the Czechoslovakian invasion. It appears that following the invasion, the Soviets expected effectively to produce favorable political as well as military results in the short term. 3 Comparison with the use of troops in Tblisi, Baku, and Vilnius in 1988-91 suggest that the Soviets still see value in this approach. There were many Soviet miscalculations, however, including the international response, Pakistani support for the resistance, the strength of the resistance itself, the weakness and ab initio illegitimacy of the PDPA regime, and the fundamental differences between the Afghan situation and any of the historical models that may have guided Soviet thinking. For example, the seizure of the capital, the central organs of state power, and the command of the armed forces are certainly what the Soviets aimed at and accomplished in 1956 and 1968. Yet these were not the "center of gravity" in Afghanistan. Both Western observers and resistance leaders realize that Moscow did not apply the full rigors of its operational - or tactical - capabilities in Afghanistan.4 Indeed, it is difficult to distinguish possible tactical mistakes from what may have been a deliberate attempt to try to fight a long-term, inexpensive, "cheap and nasty" low-intensity war emphasizing the (ultimately unsuccessful) political elements of consolidation. The Soviets never made a massive commitment of manpower and resources to the war. There was an obvious desire to minimize their own casualties, reflected in the

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relatively slow tempo of most combined arms operations.5 For example, there were few systemic cordon and sweep operations, as used by the French in Algeria. The Soviets never aimed to control the Afghan countryside. Occupied territory usually was returned to the resistance within a few days even in the case of victories such as Zhawar in 1986 or the relief of Khost in 1988. Soviet logistics and communications routes, including the air routes into Kabul and critical supply lines like the Salang Pass, remained vulnerable to attack, although better security was evident by 1987.6 While the construction of an elaborate manpower-intensive security system led to relative quiet around Kabul by 1987, Soviet-Afghan forces still confronted attacks on the immediate outskirts of Kabul. 7 In 1980-88 Soviet tactics and forces in Afghanistan had been interlocking, redundant, and complementary.8 The traditional Soviet demand for overlapping and redundant capabilities means that Soviet tactics, like their weapons, have many elements whose use together makes the whole more than the sum of the parts. The Soviets came to many of the same tactical conclusions that have characterized Western counter-insurgency campaigns: the perception of the war as basically a political action, the importance of helicopters for both firepower and mobility in countries with little surface transportation, the importance of effective intelligence and target acquisition (it is not lack of firepower the Soviets suffered, but inability to apply it against the guerrillas), a need for effective indigenous forces to carry as much of the fighting as possible, and the need for specialized counter-insurgency light infantry to fight guerrillas in their own way.9 Yet the war was apparently fought largely from Moscow and Tashkent, leaving few decisions to local commanders. This contrasts with the war against the Basmachi, and with most successful Western counterinsurgency experience as in Malaya and the Philippines. The criticism of Stalin's original over-centralization of command which arose in the late 1980s under Gorbachev may eventually by applied to Afghanistan. There were some politico-military successes. One example was the Soviet effort to enhance militia forces in the winter of 1985-86, in part by orchestrating the rising of Pathan tribes in Pakistan. The whole effort was run by Major General A. A. Zakharov, Deputy Commander for Political Affairs of the Limited Contingent Soviet Forces Afghanistan, at Jalalabad. The aims were to increase Kabul's legitimacy (it was coordinated with the calling of a supposed loya jirga), to divide the Afghans further, and to involve the populace with the government. Zakharov increased pressure on Pakistan, which sent troops to the border. When they were willing to fight, the militia provided the Soviets with a force suitable for interdiction, hijacking or ambushing resistance supplies as well as providing fertile ground for developing intelligence. The emphasis on interdiction was also

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intended to preempt attacks on high-value targets, and to bring Communist troops to the border thereby increasing the pressure on Pakistan. But most of these successes, political and military, were short-lived, with the residual impact of winning some Shinwari and Afridi Pathans over to Kabul's side, and they were instrumental in the defense of Jalalabad in March 1989.10 There was little pacification of the "imperial" style, with its building of roads and provision of largesse by the imperial power. Despite efforts to emphasize Soviet participation in development for both internal and external audiences, few efforts were made to develop the areas outside the 15-20 percent of Afghanistan controlled by the Communists. The rest may have been largely seen as militarily insignificant. The Soviets simply offered firepower. The Soviets, starting in mid-1980, selectively destroyed much of Afghanistan's agriculture, especially in the Pushtu-speaking region. 11 This was accomplished primarily by depopulating large areas of the countryside, near the roads, in food-producing areas, or along routes from Pakistan. In early 1989, the main withdrawal routes were added to this list of targets. The Soviets tried to drain the ocean in which the guerrilla "fish," of Mao's metaphor, were supposed to swim. US General Phillip Sheridan, who ordered in 1864 that Virginia's Shenandoah Valley be ravaged so that "a crow flying over . . . will have to carry his own rations," would have understood. Soviet tactics of repression frequently target food supplies, as against Ukrainian farmers during de-kulakization, Muslim Kazak nomads during sedentarization in the 1930s, Caucasian and Crimean insurgents in the 1940s, and Poles, Baits, and Ukrainians after 1945.12 The destruction of Afghan agriculture south of the Hindu Kush also contributed to interdiction. As with Sheridan's crow, it forced the resistance to carry their own food. Villages that could be used as staging points for attacks were removed. De-population was encouraged by aircraft and artillery. It increased the effectiveness of special operations tactics by removing villagers who might warn of Soviet convoys. Depopulation created "free fire zones" in which any movement seen by aircraft or sensors was judged hostile (although at the cost of freeing guerrillas to plant mines and attack in the same areas without incurring reprisals on local inhabitants). Soviet political as well as military objectives were served through de-population. Refugees increased pressure on Pakistan. The driving of other refugees into Afghanistan's own cities and towns (where many could be hired by the government or became economically dependent upon it) provided manpower for militias and WAD/KHAD (the Kabul regime is KGB surrogate) and created an uprooted population away from its natural leaders that could be seen as fertile ground for political consolidation.

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Despite their own history and concerted efforts to study foreign counterinsurgency concepts and special warfare techniques, the Soviets learned slowly in Afghanistan.13 One resistance fighter, a former lieutenant colonel in the Afghan Army, familiar with Soviet practices from years of reading their military literature and attending the Frunze Staff College, saw that the Soviets were incapable of carrying out their prescribed tactics until after the spring of 1982.14 Soviet writings had called for "bold and decisive maneuver," but there was little evidence of this during the first three years of war. 15 This gap between Soviet practice and theory in Afghanistan is one of the most significant questions in Western analysis. Soviet political and strategic weakness flowed from the sum total of many failures at the tactical level. Pre-1984, combined arms operations firepower was applied at the expense of maneuverability, speed, and shock. 16 The early combined arms operations had little reconnaissance. Until 1984, they were usually unable to take advantage of guerrilla inexperience, they seldom moved on high ground, nor did they practice aggressive small unit tactics. Little effort was made to use flanking forces or to move against guerrilla forces beyond direct-fire range of the roads. The "cresting of the heights," holding high ground along the route of the column, was sometimes accomplished by heliborne forces, but more often ignored. Throughout the early period of the war the inexperienced guerrillas often assumed positions for ambush or attack where they could be easily enveloped. They seldom were. Even with eventual tactical improvements, the bulk of Soviet forces - motorized rifle units mounted in BTRs or BMPs - remained roadbound with limited tactical flexibility, despite being responsible for large-scale ground offensives and convoy escorts. The Soviets did not only use the wrong concepts in their offensives, but poorly applied them as well. The lack of effective intelligence hindered Soviet actions before 1984. Moreover, the Soviet models of conventional war applied in Afghan conditions tended to lead to inflexible tactics that may have made sense in their original context, but which Western experience had shown was fatal for effective counter-insurgency.17 The Soviets instead held to the belief that "advance coordination and strict control are the guarantees of success in combat involving combined arms forces" rather than rapid pro-action and reaction by relatively small, highly mobile forces.18 Historical experience shows that adapting to counter-insurgency warfare requires not so much strict control but rather rapid movement, frequently at the expense of maximum firepower. This soon led to the increased use of Soviet special operations forces, especially in 1984-86. But none of these adaptations yielded long or far-reaching battlefield success even up to the

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later Soviet conventional battles of the war, around Paghman in June-July, 1988 and the relief of Khost in January, 1988.19 Efforts to adapt to counter-guerrilla warfare led to improvements in Soviet combined armed tactics during the war. But the Soviets started from a low level of effectiveness. While heliborne and special forces carried more of the burden of Soviet offensive action by 1984, the combined arms offensive still emphasized mechanized components reinforced by Kabul's forces.20 While the Soviets mounted heliborne operations of multi-battalion strength, they did not reshape their operational practice around the helicopter. The Soviets saw the use of light forces in combat operations as being complementary to the use of combined arms mechanized forces.21 Heavy firepower - artillery, fighter-bombers, or helicopters - often independent of troops, marked Soviet operations throughout the war, more often targeted on the rural agricultural infrastructure than on guerrillas, predictably leading to a majority of civilian casualties.22 Soviet offensives, such as Panjsher V in 1982, Panjsher VII in 1984, Khost in 1985, and Zhawar in 1986 were all characterized by massive airstrikes although the dispersion of the resistance forces and the decentralization of its logistics and command structures made such heavy strikes almost always ineffective. The limited number of Soviet forces committed to combat in Afghanistan meant that the Soviets had to depend not only on massive firepower but also on high technology. Since its earliest years, the Red Army had in fact considered (in combat as well as on paper) the importance of specific operations in "special conditions," such as those in mountains, deserts, urban areas, forests, and at night. 23 According to several experts: "The Soviets believe their normal motorized rifle and tank units are well suited for all these special operations and conditions . . . They believe that regular troops given special training for a period of days or weeks immediately prior to any one of these types of operations will be able to fulfill their duties in exemplary fashion." 24 Before 1979 a flow of open-source books and articles showed a continued Soviet concern in these areas. But this was not enough to prevent a large gap between theory and battlefield reality in Afghanistan. In other areas, where there was less pre-1979 concern, the gap was apparently larger. Partisan and counter-insurgency operations were not seen before the Afghan war as a major military mission. They may have been regarded as the province of the MVD, KGB, and surrogate armed forces as experience in the Polish Civil War, the Ukraine, and the Baltic States in 1944-54 demonstrated. 25 There is no evidence that the lessons of these conflicts had much impact on the Soviet military's operations and tactics at the beginning of war in Afghanistan. It appears that in 1980-84 the Soviets had

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to first relearn these lessons and then begin to adapt. The continued involvement of Soviet military forces in the center-periphery conflicts of the Gorbachev era means some lessons may be long-lasting. The special operations forces One example of Soviet adaptation to the "special conditions" of Afghanistan was the rise in importance of special operations forces, especially in 1984-86. In the Afghanistan context, "special operations forces" is a much broader concept than simply the spestnaz units that so concern US and NATO planners. They are instead simply those forces which can undertake missions distinct from large-scale conventional operations. 26 Their use showed at least some Soviet recognition that "The first principle of successful counter-guerrilla tactics is to take the guerrilla as the model and fight him in his own style . . . This principle means the deployment of forces in small units relying largely on weapons they can carry." 27 Not all "special forces" missions in Afghanistan were carried out by mission-specific forces such as spetsnaz. Troops from airborne divisions and independent regiments, from the air assault brigade and the air assault battalion, and from KGB Border Guard mobile groups (as well as from the one to three battalions in each motorized rifle division and brigade trained in heliborne operations) provided much of the manpower for these operations. 28 Spetsnaz forces, working in conjunction with assets in place and with the invading airborne forces, had originally played an important role in the invasion of Afghanistan, seizing communications facilities, government buildings, command centers and choke points. 29 This exemplified what the Soviets define as an "operational-strategic" or "operational" mission for special operations forces.30 But after the 1979 invasion, special operations forces in Afghanistan primarily carried out tactical missions. There was a gap in deploying spetsnaz after the 1979 invasion. Only a year later did the Afghans start to encounter Soviet troops they considered special operations units. Special forces certainly were in action throughout 1982. Some deployed to Afghanistan directly from the Soviet Union, returning after each operation. By 1984—86, there was increased use of Soviet special forces throughout Afghanistan.31 Tasked with doing what massed firepower and mechanized forces could not accomplish, their missions and impact were intended to have both military and political impact. In their role as counter-insurgency light infantry, Soviet special operations forces provided reconnaissance as well as fighting power. 32 They were inserted, usually by helicopter or truck but occasionally by parachute, in strengths ranging from scout teams to full battalions. They operated independently or in conjunction with conventional forces. They seized

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high ground and surrounded villages. Helicopter mobility provided a capacity for maneuver and surprise that ground combined-arms columns lacked throughout the war. Special operations patrols in 1984—86 frequently interdicted Afghan supply routes and night movements. Either dismounted or using airlifted BMD fighting vehicles, they operated along Afghan infiltration routes. They created ambushes or reported the results of reconnaissance.33 Some special forces units protected convoys, establishing outposts on crests along the route. Other units were assigned to airfield protection through aggressive night time patrolling. Soviet adaptation to the realities of counter-insurgency by using specialized light forces parallels that of Western campaigns.34 The British used the Special Air Service and Gurkhas in Malaya and Borneo.35 The SAS also proved an effective anti-guerrilla force in South Arabia and Oman. In Kenya, British and African line infantry battalions formed Forest Operating Companies. In Vietnam, US Special Forces and reconnaissance units had their own missions. 36 In Africa, the Rhodesian Selous Scout, Special Air Service, Rhodesian Light Infantry and other Fire Force units were paralleled by the Portuguese Commando and flecha units. In Latin America, the Colombian Lancero and the Sandinista BLI and Cazadore units were used in this role. Different armies, coming from different backgrounds and traditions, faced with different enemies, in different terrain, moved towards using the same type of units and tactics. 37 At the height of the war, a maximum of 20 percent of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan could be considered special operations units. In sum: The combination of tactics that are most effective therefore emerges clearly. Many small, lightly armed units maintaining constant patrols by night and by day to locate the enemy, doggedly pursuing him once contact has been made and having the means to call in help from larger forces should they arise - these form the core of the counterinsurgency force. Larger units on operation are useful to commence clearing operations and as back-up for small patrols. Helicopters and good communications are also important as is good current intelligence.38 The use of Soviet mechanized units or Kabul regime regular units conceded tactical initiative to the guerrillas. They knew when such large-scale operations were coming, both from informers or scouts and from the preliminary airstrikes or artillery barrage. Unless these forces quickly trapped the Afghans, they would soon be fighting on Afghan terms. The only exceptions were when the Soviets threatened something the Afghans believed they could not give up (as in the 1985 and 1986 attacks against Zhawar) or when the Afghans decided to stand and fight in pitched battle. In the early years of the war this was one of the few ways the Soviets could bring their ground forces into action. Otherwise, the Afghans were

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able to hit and run, choosing when to strike and when to evade, either on a local scale using traditional Afghan tactics (as in much of Paktia throughout the war) or on a larger scale, using more sophisticated guerrilla tactics (as in the Panjsher Valley in 1982 and 1984). The Soviets tried to surmount this problem in their usual approach by applying a broad range of solutions. They used helicopters as a flexible source of mobility and firepower.39 This was why the introduction of the Stinger and Blowpipe SAMs in late 1986 had a tremendous impact on Soviet special operations in 1987-88. The role of firepower again had to be assumed by heavy artillery and the role of mobility by armored vehicles. This pushed the Soviets back towards the model of combined-arms tactics, formidable against a conventional opponent but normally counterproductive against guerrillas. The threat to the helicopters undercut the special operations forces that could alone of the Soviet Army seize the initiative from the guerrillas. Kabul regime militia, able to move and fight like guerrillas, were important for the same reason. But by the middle of 1980 the Soviets realized that the most effective solutions would be political and diplomatic rather than on the battlefield - given the decision not to escalate the war. The political battlefield Successful counter-insurgency stresses the interaction of military and political efforts. Before the invasion, Moscow reportedly advised against some of the worst PDPA policies, such as the attempts to destroy the country's religious infrastructure and to change the color of the Afghan flag from green, the color of Islam, to red, the color of communist revolution.40 Both moves were eventually rescinded in 1979, but these and many other actions did irreparable political harm to the PDPA regime. 41 Throughout the ensuing war the Soviets never lost sight of the importance or potential primacy of the politics, even in periods such as Gorbachev's 1985-86 push for battlefield victory. The final announcement of withdrawal was not itself an acknowledgement of defeat but rather a decision that pursuing the same goals politically and diplomatically rather than by using the Soviet Army would be more likely to yield success at what was truly important to Moscow. Political actions during the war aimed at dividing the resistance and undermining its popular support, especially among Afghan elites. The Soviets realized that Islamic leaders were vital to this end. This was especially true in the absence of many of the institutions, such as trade unions, that had once been exploited as components of "national front" organizations in the more developed nations of Eastern Europe.

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In 1981, the Soviets created the Kabul regime's Council of Islamic Affairs which was modeled on the Muslim Spiritual Board in Tashkent. 42 The Council attracted only a few lesser-known mullahs but no important Sufi figures, to whom religious prestige in Afghanistan is usually attached. Moreover, even those mullahs who professed to cooperate with the Kabul regime proved to be unreliable partners, many providing intelligence for the resistance. The resistance moved quickly to eliminate any chance that Islamic figures, however minor, would be coopted. Mullahs who proclaimed their allegiance to Kabul or who remained "undecided" were targets for assassination. Soviet propaganda revived the idea of "Red Mullahs" (Islamic clergy who played an important part in the Soviet conquest of Central Asia in the 1920s) in large part to encourage the formation of a similar group from among the Afghan clergy. The Afghan resistance demonstrated, however, that Red Mullahs were likely to become dead mullahs. By mid-1988, there were reports that the Soviets were installing their own citizens in the mosques of northern Afghanistan: Uzbeks and Turkmen, graduates of the madrassa of Tashkent. 43 Conceivably, the Soviets will look to Islam and, the trans-border appeal of rising Tadjik nationalism, and strong economic links as means to influence the north in the 1990s. Moscow also had Kabul establish the National Front of the Fatherland (Jabha-ye Melli-ye Padar Vatan) which aimed to attract fellow travelers of all kinds but especially from civil servants, city dwellers, and those dependent in one way or another upon the regime. Supposedly nonparty but actually intended to bring the authority of the PDPA to local level, the Front was modeled after organizations used to propel the transition to Communist rule in Eastern Europe. It could not overcome, however, the fundamental weakness of its PDPA parent. Unlike the "national" communist parties of Central Asia in the 1920s or 30s, the Front could not claim much loyalty or legitimacy outside of Kabul and a few cities. Nor did it prove an effective tool for integrating its supporters with those supporting Kabul for ethnic, tribal, or economic reasons, or as a result of having split with the resistance. As with so much of the Soviet political effort, the National Front of the Fatherland represented the stick with little carrot. The communists fighting the Basmachi could identify benefits to the population that would flow from their victory. They could not do that in Afghanistan. Talk (and little else) of better medical care, women's issues, education, and rural development did not stand up to the realities of airstrikes and landmines or the Front's near-total identification with a foreign, infidel invader. The National Front of the Fatherland enjoyed little success. It did not further pacification except within the defensive perimeters surrounding

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Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Khost and Jalalabad and a few rural areas. In these areas, however, the regime's strength came not from the Front but usually from the ability to attract locals, through economic or tribal loyalties, to fight for Kabul - such as Shinwari Pathans in Jalalabad, Khosti Pathans in Khost, and de-tribalized bazaari Pathans in both places. The Front none the less continued to exist, finally dropping the "Fatherland" from its title at its 1987 Party Congress. The resistance targeted many of its members, as they did those who collaborated with the regime's attempts to call a loya jirga (great assembly) or a trans-border tribal jirga. In 1989-91, regime political consolidation used fear of the resistance leadership, rather than ideology, as its prime motivation. By 1986 the failure of these tactics led to the Soviet policy of "National Reconciliation." Here, the instrument for communist legitimization was to be a "government of national reconciliation" that would allow cosmetic power-sharing by non-party elements while retaining real power in first, the Soviet-controlled PDPA and, in later iterations, WAD and the security services. 44 This tactic, modified repeatedly despite its lack of success, was revived despite Najibullah's desperate purges in February, 1989, at frequent intervals. Intelligence was critical to Soviet tactics. On the battlefield, the Soviets used the full range of military reconnaissance capabilities that make up their concept of razvedka (all-source intelligence and scouting). This included reconnaissance patrols, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft with a wide range of sensors, ground radars, and electronic intelligence. But the most vital source was human intelligence. This was provided by the Soviet-developed secret police modeled on the KGB: the WAD (Wizarat-ye Amaniat-ye Dawlati, Ministry of State Security, formerly and still known as KHAD), organized after the Soviet invasion to supersede the various secret police organizations that had been used in the brutal intra-PDPA warfare of 1978-79. 45 Now the secret police would be used against the resistance rather than against fellow communists. The real power in KHAD and WAD during 1980-88, however, remained with its Soviet advisors. WAD tried to subvert the resistance groups and, increasing with Gorbachev's accession in 1985, acted as an arm of the KGB, carrying out an immense campaign of state-supported terrorism against Pakistan. 46 Another political dimension of the Afghanistan War was the Soviet attempt to exploit tribal and ethnic divisions. As with other Soviet political efforts, it enjoyed only limited success. Throughout the course of the war, Moscow tried particularly to disrupt the resistance in those critical regions where Pathans are most numerous, along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, in the hopes of eliminating Pakistan as a staging area. Moreover, there were indications throughout the war about reviving the notion of both an

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independent Pushtunistan and Baluchistan to further differentiate these nationalities.47 In these tribal and ethnic overtures, as in the case with WAD/KHAD, the Soviets used a Kabul puppet institution as an executive agent. The Ministry of Tribes and Frontiers had one section dealing with Afghan nationalities (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara, and Turkmen) and another whose targets were the Pathan tribes, the Baluchis and the Nuristanis. The former ministerial section had little success; the latter, because of the significance of Pathan tribal divisions, was more successful and was recognized as a significant threat. 48 However, in these actions they were successful mainly where they could tap traditional divisions - economic and religious as well as tribal - rather than winning the groups over to the PDPA's or National Front's ideology, which continued to have little appeal except to the few, predominantly urban, supporters and opportunists concentrated in Kabul and a few cities. Moscow gold - and its use in buying off Afghans - worked much better than the ideological appeal, and continued to flow to Kabul in 1989-91. Neither military suppression, nor political and economic attempts to undermine the population, nor Soviet hopes of creating internal divisions proved effective in 1979-88. 49 Soviet political campaigns with "Red Mullahs" and agitprop detachments never approached success even following battlefield victories. Soviet initiatives such as buying off guerrillas and raising the local militias were only substantial when they were geared toward short-term military objectives. Pakistan's increasing warweariness, the fickle nature of Western support for the beleaguered mujahideen, and Soviet control of the media and educational system still failed to create legitimacy for the regime in Kabul. 50 Even the resistance failures of 1989-91 and Kabul's surprising resilience have not altered this basic fact nor reduced Kabul's dependence on Moscow. A decade of conflict

The question remains as to why Moscow limited its military commitment in the 1980-86 period when battlefield success seemed a possibility. Probably the minimization of costs - international as well as domestic - was a primary motivator. The low-scale "cheap and nasty" approach must have seemed appealing in the Kremlin. Especially before 1985, there was doubtlessly hope that both world and Soviet opinion would accept occupation of Afghanistan as a fait accompli, allowing the Soviets to evolve, adapt and settle in for the long haul, allowing attrition to provide victory in the end. There were also the physical limitations of logistics and infrastructure. The Soviets would have had to make greater investment in

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infrastructure if they were going to greatly increase the size and scope of their forces. This would have put them in much the same spiral of diminishing returns for large commitments that the French faced in Algeria and the US in South Vietnam: building the infrastructure requires construction troops, plus combat troops to guard them, plus logistics troops to meet the increased supply demands. Another alternative would have been to rely on even more massive firepower for a military solution, such as intensive high-level bombing or use of chemical weapons, which would have had a greater international diplomatic cost. But any escalation would have encountered a barrier far more fundamental than that of financial, domestic, or international costs, the political weakness of the Kabul regime. The Soviets were aware that what was required was political consolidation. The military role was to make that possible. After the first six months of 1980, the Soviets most likely saw that military force would not be the primary determinative factor, much as it was not in Central Asia or Eastern Europe (although recognizing, in both cases, without a victorious Red Army there would have been no consolidation). This also parallels Western thinking on counter-insurgency situations. It would also explain former chief of staff Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev's statement that "We [the Soviet military] never had the goal of winning the war there. Only of helping that government." 51 But in the absence of military success, other policy tools became ineffective. For ten years, the Soviets hoped that their military and its allies could hold the line in Afghanistan until some political or diplomatic conclusion could be achieved. Meanwhile Soviet military thinking stayed close to the concepts of combined arms operations, even while acknowledging the Afghanistan war's "special conditions." The flexible use of helicopters and the increasing importance of special operations forces showed a capability to adapt and might have provided eventual battlefield success through a drawn-out process of attrition had the conditions of 1984-6 continued in the long term. But while they claimed a number of tactical successes in Afghanistan, they were unable to turn the course of the war to Moscow's favor. Had the Soviets been able to maintain the battlefield conditions of 1984—86 in Afghanistan into the 1990s, it is quite possible that they would have eventually prevailed with Pakistani support being the element most likely to collapse. But by early 1989, they were unwilling to pay the price not only in casualties and materiel but, more importantly, in international relations.52 Soviet forces have clearly learned from their Afghanistan experience, especially in small and special unit operations and in helicopter techniques and tactics. The war also provided a convenient and much-needed shakeout for Soviet command, control and communications systems and it allowed

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new weapons to be tested and developed. The changes were apparent to the Soviet's more perceptive guerrilla opponents, such as Abdul Haq: Because of the war, the Soviets now fight better at night and are better trained for fighting in the mountains ... In their staff schools a meritocracy is beginning to replace the former system of personal connections. The enemy soldiers I encounter are much better than the ones I fought at the beginning of the war. The Russian military needed Afghanistan to get it back into shape. A lot of the problems they've had since the end of the Second World War havefinallybeen resolved.53 The mujahideen's evolution of regional command structures, its ability to endure full-scale battles, and its development of fighting forces better than the village "jabha" made the war increasingly difficult for the Soviets. It is impossible to speculate what the Soviet military response would have been to efforts had their war continued. But without gross diplomatic and military escalation, the Soviets could not have won against the resistance that had emerged by 1987. They could only hold the line without having any confidence that the PDPA could ever consolidate its own power while faced with the critical de-legitimizing Soviet presence. 54 Ultimately, the Soviets may gain more from withdrawing than they did from fighting. Kabul certainly did. In fact, the Soviets may be looking away from the mountains of Afghanistan toward outrench to Tehran and Islamabad to extend any interests along the southern border. The Trans-border appeal of Soviet Central Asian nationalism is likely to be stronger than anything stemming from Moscow. The impact of Afghanistan on the Soviet military By the end of the 1980s, Soviet press criticism of the decision-making process that had led to the Afghanistan invasion was familiar.55 Significantly, criticism of the invasion focused on Brezhnev and the Politburo at the height of "the era of stagnation." Little criticism has been leveled at the military, either for its role in the initial invasion or in the conduct of the war. Only Gorbachev's political opponent, former Chief of the General Staff Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, has been included in the criticism, being linked with the invasion through former Minister of Defense Dmitiri Ustinov, but other criticism, in response to this, has specifically pointed out Ogarkov and Akhromeyev as having opposed not only the decision to invade, presented to them as a fait accompli by Brezhnev and Ustinov, but also the decision to give Soviet forces the burden of offensive combat once the invasion had taken place. 56 The Soviet critique of the decision-making that led to the invasion underlines that expert advice was excluded and that input from informed civilians was not heard in the Politburo. 57 The Soviet press also has used Afghanistan to repudiate the "era of

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stagnation," to use the war as an example of the poverty of imagination in Brezhnev-era decision-making, and of "not thinking things through." 58 Such criticism is also intended for external consumption. The end of direct Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan makes it easier to advertise internally as well as externally - the discontinuities between Gorbachev and Brezhnev. The continuing absence of any fundamental economic success and the continued internal use of the military for political ends under Gorbachev made such differentiation particularly important. The Soviet Army has also had to adapt to receiving criticism. As long as troops remained in Afghanistan criticism was minimal. By 1989 criticisms over a range of military issues had greatly increased. Treatment of conscripts (an issue probably more directly affecting Soviet public attitudes on the military than the war itself) and the treatment of Afghanistan war veterans became topics of sharp public discussion. The Soviet military has always been open to criticism, but only on its own terms. The "era of stagnation" certainly saw fullblown debate on significant military issues, especially over tactical or training deficiencies. Battlefield defeats by Soviet-equipped and trained forces in the Middle East in 1973 and 1982 also led to debate on the lessons of those conflicts. No such open debate had yet surfaced on Afghanistan in the Soviet military press, not even discussion of the tactical issues that would seem most important to the Afghanistan experience, such as the question of helicopter survivability. This may reflect, however, a paradox of the Gorbachev era. Military debates and open-source information are more closely restricted, in many cases, than during the "era of stagnation." By the end of the 1980s, criticism of the way the war was fought (as opposed to criticism of the decision to invade) was limited to specific low-level shortcomings and did not address pervasive or systematic military failings. While it can be assumed that there has been significant examination of the lessons of Afghanistan by the Soviet military at all levels, there is nothing in the open literature or in reported contacts with Soviet military officials suggesting that Moscow is prepared to acknowledge fundamental flaws in the basic Soviet way of war as a result of the Afghanistan experience. Only general regrets surface, such as the fact that using the military in Afghanistan was counterproductive to overall Soviet policy, or that the General Staff's initial recommendation to Brezhnev, that the Soviet Army remain largely in garrison while the Kabul regime was made legitimate, was neither adopted nor feasible.59 Military failure was seen as one of tactics. But failure was one element leading to questioning, in 1989-91, of the military's right to control the military component of Soviet doctrine. As Soviet officers said about Afghanistan, "We have not succeeded in everything we planned to do here . . . We are leaving and we

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have a sense of not having accomplished our mission to the end." But this is hardly an indictment of the Soviet military or of flawed policies.60 There is no evidence that the Soviet military sees itself as having lost the war, let alone that Afghanistan will produce change to the extent of the Crimean or the Russo-Japanese wars. Silence surrounds the fact that the Soviet military - however effective, if admittedly inefficient, a force it might be fighting NATO or China - was incapable of delivering a quick victory with limited resources in a counter-insurgency conflict on its border. Counter-insurgency warfare is inherently highly de-centralized and not amenable to command from the top. It is war waged by junior officers and NCOs. The Soviet Army, however, which over the years has emphasized command from the top downwards, also stresses operations over tactics. Soviet commanders at echelons above division (and possibly division as well) are probably as skilled and well-prepared as any potential opponents. But the resources simply do not exist to also make Soviet company commanders as good as their opponents. There are simply too many company commanders required for the vast Soviet Army, and their limits were exposed in Afghanistan for almost ten years. Moscow had at one time believed that a few divisions in garrison around the cities would produce a result similar to that in 1956 Hungary or 1968 Czechoslovakia. In those cases the besieged governments were Soviet creations, and hardly able to stand against their creators. 61 The Afghan government Moscow moved to replace in 1979 was instead, though Communist, a home-grown weed. Nor were there other wars in the world underway as there were in 1956 and 1968. The lessons of Afghanistan are likely to be much broader than specific military insights. It was not Soviet military limitations that proved decisive. Soviet diplomacy could not produce an international situation that would legitimate the Kabul regime, nor help Moscow accomplish its strategic goals, nor isolate the Afghan resistance. Foreign diplomatic and military support was probably the most decisive single reason for Soviet failure. Western reporting of the vicious, decade-long war in Afghanistan played a vital role. Other Soviet counter-insurgency conflicts, such as the Polish Civil War of 1944-49 or the war against guerrillas in the Baltic states and the Ukraine, on the other hand, never increased to the extent that they became a fundamental element in superpower relations. "The man from Afghanistan" One indication that the Soviets do not view Afghanistan as a military defeat is the fact that many of the generals associated with the war thrived. While

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these generals were largely the "fast runners" of their generation and would have succeeded had there been no war, it is apparent that Soviet military performance in Afghanistan has not blighted their records. For example, Marshal S. L. Sokolov, who conducted the initial invasion, became Minister of Defense (although he was to be sacked in the wake of the Mathias Rust affair). Army General V. I. Varrenikov, senior military advisor in Kabul in 1987-9, became Commander-in-Chief of the Army. General Yu. P. Maksimov, who as commander of the Turkestan Military District was closely involved with the war, became Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces. Even General M. M. Zaitsev, the man who failed to deliver Gorbachev his battlefield victory in 1985-6, remained as Commander-in-Chief of the Southern TVD until 1989. The turn-over in the Soviet high command since 1985 makes it apparent that Gorbachev does not share Brezhnev's belief in the importance of "stability of cadres". This means that those who kept their jobs were unlikely to do so through inertia, but rather as a mark of proven ability. The Afghanistan experience is seen as a positive influence in service careers where many of today's younger military leaders came to prominence. While Afghanistan certainly did not enhance morale, officers who have served in Afghanistan are portrayed in the Soviet press as energetic, favoring military reform, and having less patience with bureaucracy and paperwork. Combat tested, they are seen as having a sense of mission and could serve, despite their relatively small percentage of total strength in the overall officer corps, as the cutting edge of either repression or reform. At tactical levels of command, it is "the man from Afghanistan" who is the "right-flanker," who is seen as exemplifying the results of effective training and of opposing the pointless "checking the ball" (ticket-punching) practices that became widespread under the "era of stagnation." Afghanistan's influence on Soviet operations, tactics, and training will probably be seen most clearly through its influence on the military's cadres. The Soviets explicitly state that their future officers are being trained by veterans of Afghanistan and that these veterans set the standards for realistic training; Marshal Akhromeyev calling these veterans "the golden fund of the army . . . we must treat them with care, train them solicitously and promote them" because of the potential they have of providing greater benefits for the cadres of an evolving Soviet military.62 Not perceived as a Jena-like disaster, requiring root-and-branch reform, Afghanistan is instead regarded as part of the critical generational change in the Soviet military. There was, pre-1990 support for perestroika, from these cadres although the older generation's view against unilateral force cuts became stronger. The emerging young leaders are going to be more indebted to Gorbachev than their predecessors, who were part of the

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military leadership that benefited from "the era of stagnation" when the military was one of the very few Soviet institutions that actually worked well - a claim that became harder to make after Afghanistan. Ending the war has at least made more resources available to a force that is going to have to deal with internal political and economic crisis; resource constraint while at the same time trying to wage "the third military revolution" with high-technology conventional weapons and sensors. Perhaps the best single example of this career pattern is the last commander of the Limited Contingent Soviet Forces Afghanistan, Lieutenant General Boris Gromov.63 Gromov received more and better press coverage, both nationally and internationally, than any other Soviet battlefield commander since 1945. His command was operational as well as administrative, including executing "Operation Mainline", the relief of Khost in December, 1987. He was appointed to command Kiev Military District in early 1989, and deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and chief of the MVD Troops in 1990. As such, he was closely involved with repression in the Baltic states. He is often cited as a potential military successor to Gorbachev. He is presented as the archetype of the "man from Afghanistan." The military had an initial interest in going along with Gorbachev's denunciations of Brezhnev-era decision making on Afghanistan. It allows them to say "It was not our war; it was a political war and if anyone was defeated, it was politicals in Moscow." While the lack of military victory made political consolidation on the Eastern European model impossible, what military successes were painfully gained in Afghanistan by 1985-6, it could be said, were undercut by the political, diplomatic, and ideological failures to support and consolidate them. The revolutions of 1989 certainly showed how fragile political consolidation - even after 45 years - was in Eastern Europe, let alone Afghanistan. The failures to divide the Afghans, to coopt key religious figures, to install a credible communist regime in Kabul, and to field a small, reliable Kabul regime army, all undercut Soviet gains on the battlefield - but none of these failings was the fault of the Soviet Army. Afghanistan: the impact on tactics The Afghanistan experience appears to have contributed to a downwards reassessment of the utility of force in external relations. At the tactical level, however, the Afghan experience provided basic lessons, such as how to mount a battalion-size air assault in the face of SAM-armed opponents or how to maneuver BMP-2 platoons under fire. These are subjects where Afghanistan-inspired articles in the Soviet military literature are likely to

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have a direct impact on Soviet forces (and those of their allies) not limited to South Asia contingencies. A number of tactical innovations seen first in Afghanistan have spread throughout the Soviet Army. It is uncertain whether these are direct lessons from the war or whether these were already emerging ideas that were tried in action. In addition to the role of specialized counterinsurgency light infantry (whose internal troop counterparts are the "black berets" of 1989-91), the results of other forces and weapons which were tested in Afghanistan have been evaluated by the rest of the Soviet military. Different elements of the Soviet military are likely to have come away with different lessons. The Air Force's helicopter units and the Army's airborne, air assault, and special operations units certainly did much better than the motorized rifle and tank units, as reflected by their use in internal crises in 1989-91 as well as by the preponderance of Hero of the Soviet Union awards going to the former units. The 1980s trend towards the bifurcation of the Soviet Army into two forces - one being high-readiness, high-technology and costly, the other being lower-readiness, using older weapons at less cost - was not apparent in Afghanistan. Rather, a new bifurcation of the forces committed to the war emerged, between those units capable of effective offensive counter-insurgency tactics and those which could not adapt. The use of helicopters was certainly refined in Afghanistan, although they never recovered their prominence in the Soviet war effort after the Stinger SAM was introduced to combat on 26 September, 1986. The Soviet military press has, since the invasion, emphasized a number of subjects that flow from Afghanistan experience. Major General Yuriy Pavlovich Grekov, Chief of Staff of the 40th Army in Afghanistan in 1986-8, considered the lessons in airmobile operations to be the most significant to emerge: "On the whole . . . it was in Afghanistan that I really understood personally what it means to land a desant."64 Other lessons include the emphasis on better and more realistic training and more physical and mental conditioning and better soldiering skills. Training shortfalls were soon identified in Afghanistan. Part of the answer was to ensure that soldiers going to combat units in Afghanistan had been through a training regiment since: "the training regiment system certainly provides a more effective way of preparing soldiers for service in Afghanistan." Traditional reliance on in-unit training proved insufficient in Afghanistan and is likely to become eclipsed as the complexity of weapons and tactics 65

increases. It is also likely that the Soviets will make more use of the Afghan experience in establishing their future unit organizations. For an army configured for the offensive, the Soviets and their clients in Afghanistan

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spent most of their time on the tactical defensive, holding what they valued against an opponent who retained the tactical initiative. The improvements learned in defensive tactics may have a greater impact on the military as a whole following repeated announcements that the Soviet military will now be placing their emphasis on defensive war-fighting. Logistics problems encountered in Afghanistan have led Moscow to question the adequacy of their mobilized system in a general conflict. Combat experience reinforced changes that had started before the war. The improvements can already be seen in the Soviet military.66 The initial lack of success in using motorized rifle divisions composed of predominantly Moslem reservists in 1979-80 may lead towards not only better reserve training (money permitting), possibly a smaller reserve-based force (it was not the number of divisions to be committed that was lacking, but the quality of those that were) but also toward a re-assessment of the utility of other similar low-readiness divisions in the first echelon of an invasion, especially where ethnic or religious influences come into play. The commitment of Soviet Army forces to combat domestic unrest in 1988-91 also raises this question closer to home, especially with reservists refusing mobilization. It is less easy to document the Afghan impact at other levels of Soviet military thought - at the level of military art, military science, or of operational art. Although the absence of evidence is due in part to the lack of open source material, this does not mean there lias been no impact. Indeed, there are likely to have been operational as well as tactical lessons learned from Afghanistan. Some of the bigger battles of the war, such as Panjsher V in 1982, Panjsher VII in 1984, the second Kunar Valley offensive of 1985, the attempted relief of Khost of 1985, and the relief of Khost in 1987-8 included over a division-equivalent of Soviet troops, as well as many Kabul regime forces. These battles, in breadth, depth, and duration, were comparable with an army operation, and potentially a rich source of operational lessons. Finally, the withdrawal from Afghanistan does not mean there will be no military lessons applicable to other foreign conflicts. In the words of Sandhurst professor Christopher Donnelly: Equally, while Afghanistan has in many ways been an extremely painful experience for the Soviets, it has also provided the General Staff with a new element of military experience which will be made more appropriate for export to the Third World through the medium of surrogate nations such as East Germany, North Korea, and Cuba. When the Soviet Army can raise its eyes from its current painful training problems it may be looking at a horizon which is no longer simply in the West, but somewhere in the South of East.67 Afghanistan and the new thinking There is unlikely to be any Soviet equivalent of the US "post Vietnam

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syndrome." Indeed, any comparison between Afghanistan and Vietnam, except at the broad level of the difficulties great powers encounter in small wars, is likely to be over-stretched. Afghanistan never became an intolerable war for the Soviets, in either its battlefield, internal, financial, or diplomatic costs. Despite strong public criticism, it did not lead to fundamental repudiation of the system that brought the war about or, more significantly for the military, how it was fought. What has been repudiated has been the entrenched leaders who made the initial decisions, the way the decisions have been made (with insufficient expert military and civilian advice), and their choice of policy tools (over-reliance on military means). In this way Afghanistan not only proved an example to Eastern Europe, but contributed to the Soviet political crises of 1988-91. This is a far cry from "no more Vietnams." While Vietnam consumed over half of America's combat-ready forces, Afghanistan accounted for only six of the Soviet Union's divisions. Marshal Kulikov, when commander-in-chief of the Warsaw Pact, was asked in 1987 whether he believed the lessons of Afghanistan were directly translatable to Europe. Unsurprisingly, he did not. 68 Kulikov's view of the uniqueness of the Afghanistan experience was underlined, in 1989 by Major General (rtd.) Valentin Larionov, a leading thinker on Soviet military doctrine. ' T h e Afghanistan experience led us to realize these were very specific military conditions. You either had to prepare very carefully for that kind of war or you should not fight that sort of war, very similar to US experience in Vietnam." Retired US Marine Corps Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor, then military correspondent of the New York Times (and who was among those responsible for rebuilding the Marine Corps after Vietnam) searched for similar confusion and demoralization when visiting the Group Soviet Forces Germany in 1988. He did not encounter it, but thought that the Afghanistan experience could engender re-assessment of the fundamental Soviet way of war in the future. 69 If this is to happen, there were no open-source indications by the end of the 1980s. The Afghanistan war certainly never achieved the broad and deep social divisions that Vietnam created in the United States. 70 A Soviet poll cited in 1989 reportedly showed that 61 percent of all Muscovites considered Afghanistan a mistake. But this is linked to efforts to underscore the unpopularity of the "era of stagnation." The end of the war was said to provoke "joy, because the ten-year old Afghan expedition, authorized by the Brezhnev regime, is finally over." The Afghanistan war was also unpopular among the Soviet Asian population, especially devout Moslems. It may have contributed to larger changes that led to the increased willingness of Moslems in Azerbaydzhan and Uzbekistan to assert themselves by 1988-91. 71 Tadjik nationalism has looked across the border to kinsmen in Afghanistan.

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The war in Afghanistan was much more savage than that in Vietnam. While well-reported atrocities and civilian casualties flowed from the US involvement in Vietnam, Afghanistan yielded so many of these cases that they were likely to have been systematic or even encouraged.73 The Soviets have started to admit some of these atrocities, along with systematic abuse of conscripts, drug abuse, and mistreatment of veterans. The long term effects on the military are impossible to judge. Was Afghanistan a lost war for Moscow? It takes nothing away from the Afghan people and their tremendous courage to point out that the Soviet Union, indeed, even the Soviet military, was not defeated militarily. The Geneva accords indicate not Soviet defeat, but rather adaptation to a world changed greatly since 1979. The Soviet approach to the Geneva process and the subsequent withdrawal emphasized that this was not a defeat.74 While such posturing was certainly aimed at the domestic audience - military defeat has historically influenced the course of change in Russia - there is no evidence that this was not the actual Soviet view. Whether this view will be the one that prevails in the 1990s, however, remains to be seen. Perhaps the perception of defeat will be a hard one to avoid taking root inside the Soviet Union. To Soviets raised on images of the Great Patriotic War, of the red flag being raised on the Reichstag, reports of the last convoy leaving Afghanistan passing mujahideen standing by the roadside, pointing their RPG-7s at the passing vehicles and laughing, certainly suggests something painfully close to defeat.75 Afghanistan has likely contributed to the decline of the Soviet military from their Brezhnev-era perception as the only effective shield of the state and one with a clear first claim on state resources.76 The definition of "victory" in Afghanistan may have been one of the many Brezhnev legacies Gorbachev decided to reverse. A real strategic victory, in Gorbachev's likely definition, would not be a country turned into an impoverished satellite, but instead having Afghanistan removed as an obstacle to larger Soviet purposes in dealings with the Islamic world, the US, and the rest of the West. The potential benefits to Moscow from this would far outweigh the benefits of any possible outcome in Afghanistan. Soviet/Russian interest in the sub-continent dates back to the nineteenth century. It has invaded or occupied part of Persia eleven times. 76 The emergence of governments in Tehran and Islamabad acceptable to Moscow would mean far more than controlling Afghanistan itself. Certainly Soviet moves to improve relations with Iran immediately after Khomeini's death would have been unlikely to have yielded results had there still been a Soviet army in Afghanistan. Rather than relying on battlefield escalation and another decade of war in Afghanistan, Moscow may find it preferable to exert political, diplomatic and economic pressure,

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combined with internal penetration, upon Iran and Pakistan. This will be a difficult objective, but less so than when there were Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Non-military tools of statecraft will also continue to be used not only in pursuit of policy goals with Afghanistan's neighbors but also in Afghanistan, where Russian and Soviet policy interests did not begin with the invasion nor end with the withdrawal, and where such interests have never been benign. Anthony Arnold, a veteran observer of both the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, wrote: The Soviets, having moved progressively from economic to political, to ideological to military investments in Afghanistan, are now running the film in reverse. They are abandoning the military and ideological; making great bleats about the political (but knowing that too is doomed) and are counting only on retaining the economic (to be used eventually as a platform, of course, for renewed politico-economic pressure) via the northern tier of provinces, as well as other policy gimmicks.77 The military dimension of the war was the most dramatic, photogenic, and interesting. It was the easiest to report. But it may not, in the end, be decisive. In Algeria, Rhodesia, Portuguese Africa, and elsewhere, battlefield success did not determine final victory. In those three examples, the military counter-insurgency efforts were successful until the day the war was lost. Yet while the new thinking applied to Afghanistan is likely to emphasize the non-military aspects of Soviet activities as part of Moscow's continued interest in Afghanistan, Soviet involvement in the 1990s is unlikely to accomplish goals that eluded the Soviet military in the 1980s. The reservoir of hatred towards the Soviets is vast and deep. Soviet policy toward Afghanistan emphasized that counter-revolution (and its "neo-globalist" support by the US) is unacceptable, a position that is unlikely to change under Gorbachev. 78 Its future application is likely, however, to be internal. Counter-revolution was opposed by the whole range of what the Soviets call "active measures" including disinformation, propaganda, psychological operations, intelligence, and covert activities throughout the war. This is likely to continue for internal contingencies. That Afghanistan's cultural, geographic, and geopolitical conditions were extremely inhospitable to consolidation of Communist power was recognized in Moscow by 1985. 79 This Vietnam-like frustration felt in Moscow may have helped motivate reforms, along with Gorbachev's personality, the bankruptcy of Brezhnev-era policies, and a series of internal set-backs of which Chernobyl was only the most publicized. The direction the "new thinking" may take still appears uncertain. After a period of intense military action in 1984-86, starting with the special operations forces acting as a cutting edge and ending with a supposedly revitalized Kabul regime military taking the field to carry the brunt of

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operations, the Soviets might have thought they could see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. But even before the Stingers started to raise the battlefield cost, the Soviets discovered that the end of the tunnel led them back to Termez and Kushka. The move toward eventual withdrawal was, in part, recognition that the PDPA regime would never be legitimated with Soviet garrisons and that their "internationalist duty" had received little international support. Gorbachev's policy in ending the war can be seen as a tactical adjustment in an ideologically unprepared area (the Kabul regime was, after 1981, never seen as any more than "a state in the national democratic stage of development") rather than an abandonment of a socialist regime (to which the Brezhnev doctrine would have applied). 80 Neither a Communist government nor the Brezhnev doctrine has been repudiated in Afghanistan. Those events had to wait for the revolutions of 1989. In fact, Afghanistan demonstrated that the Soviets can and will use force to alter political situations. It is highly uncertain whether this readiness will change fundamentally even under Gorbachev's apparent reassessment of the utility of force. What differs is that, in the 1990s, military power projection is likely to be internal. "New thinking" saw its most expansive expression in Gorbachev's 1988 speeches in Belgrade, New Delhi, and New York. But these were intended primarily for external consumption. They emphasized limitations on military power - and proposed standards of international conduct - at the same time that Moscow prepared to withdraw from Afghanistan. These themes about the limitations of force have been repeated in other, more internally directed, statements, and suggest that Gorbachev indeed reassessed the value and function of force in statecraft. For the time being, the military tool looks particularly unappealing for Moscow in the third world. This was reflected in the Soviet refusal to send troops to the Gulf in 1990. Afghanistan highlighted such consequences as reverberations in the rest of the developing world, arms control and trade linkages by the West, military revitalization in the US, and grave (albeit temporary) propaganda reversals in the West and the Islamic world. To be sure, the boost in US military spending and resolve beginning in the early 1980s was not only due to the invasion of Afghanistan. America was being provoked simultaneously by the hostages in Iran and by a sense of repeated foreign policy debacles in Southeast Asia, in Angola, in the Horn of Africa, and in Europe with the advent of the SS-20. Today, the Soviets reflect on that era that, "We considered military growth the sole means of ensuring security. Only very recently we believed that any period of peace was simply a breathing space and that a continued growth in combat effectiveness was security's only guarantee". 81 The invasion of

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Afghanistan manifested such thinking. The extent to which it has now gone down the memory hole is unknown. It is more likely to be applied internally than abroad. In any event, Moscow is unlikely to thank the Afghans for demonstrating the limits of power in the 1990s - which led to Soviet acquiescence in the revolutions of 1989 - or for providing an impetus to the Gorbachev reforms. These two vital realizations, however, had their roots in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan. Notes 1 Borovik, "Afghanistan: Summing U p , " Radio Liberty Research, RL 116/88, March 17, 1988. Bill Keller, "Secret Soviet Party Documents Said to Admit Afghan Errors", The New York Times, June 17, 1988, pp. A l , A7. 2 Jiri Valenta, "From Prague to Kabul: The Soviet Style of Invasion," International Security, Fall, 1980, pp. 124-127. 3 Joseph Collins, "The Soviet Military Experience in Afghanistan," Military Review, May, 1985, pp. 16-28. 4 John Erickson, Lynn Hansen, and William Schneider, Soviet Ground Forces: An Operational Assessment (Boulder, CO, London: Westview Press and Croom Helm, 1986), p. 111. 5 For example, A. Prokhanov, "Soldiers of the Revolution," Literaturnaia Gazeta, 16 April 1980; and T. Gaydar, "Battalion Marches into the Mountains," Pravda, May 10, 1980. These two writers made many trips to Afghanistan throughout the war. 6 See, for example, The Times (London), 24 September 1986. 7 "Eight Soviet Planes Destroyed in Kabul Fire," The Washington Post, June 27, 1988, p. A13. Gary Lee, "Guerrilla Missile Barrage Kills 11 in Kabul, Tass Says," The Washington Post, May 10, 1988, p. A15. 8 David C. Isby, Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army (London: Jane's, 1988), pp. 80-81. 9 David Isby, Russia's War in Afghanistan (London: Osprey, 1986). 10 "The Slow Withdrawal," Foreign Report, no. 2,017 (June 2, 1988), 5-7. 11 The intensity and effects of the Soviet targeting of agriculture and the key role in this of their military terror campaign against the population is widely reported. The Afghan resistance movements themselves produced several publications whose accuracy can be verified. The best are Afghan News of the Jamiat-i-Islami (Peshawar); Afghan Realities, a fortnightly bulletin edited by the Afghan Information and Documentation Centre (Peshawar); and Afghan Information Centre Monthly Bulletin, edited by the Afghan Information Centre. See also Craig Karp, Afghanistan: Seven Years of Soviet Occupation (US Department of State Special Report, no. 155, December, 1986). Comparing and contrasting the annual State Department Reports is one of the ways to delineate the changing Soviet approaches to Afghanistan. 12 Frederic Smith, "The War in Lithuania and the Ukraine Against Soviet Power," in Charles Moser (ed.), Combat on Communist Territory (Chicago: Regery, 1985). 13 A good survey of the start of the process is: Douglas Hart, "Low Intensity Conflict in Afghanistan, The Soviet View," Survival, March-April, 1982, pp. 61-67.

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14 Col. Ali Ahmad Jalali, "The Soviet Military Operation in Afghanistan and the Role of Light and Heavy Forces at Tactical and Operational Level," Report of Proceedings, Boeing Light Infantry Conference, 1985 (Seattle), pp. 161-181. 15 The whole series of writings by Col. F. Sverdlov are examples of the Soviet ideal that was usually not attained in Afghanistan. See Col. F. Sverdlov, "Maneuver - The Key to Victory", Voyennyi Vestnik, no. 8 (1983), 16-18. 16 David C. Isby, "Soviet Tactics in the War in Afghanistan," Jane's Defense Review, vol. 4, no. 7 (1983), 681-693. 17 Douglas S. Blaufarb and George K. Tanham, Fourteen Points: A Framework For The Analysis of Counterinsurgency (McLean, Virginia: The BDM Corporation, July 31, 1984), Report BDM/W-84-0175-TR, p. II-9. 18 (Col.) B. Nesterov, "Helicopter over the Battlefield," Aviatsiiai Kosmonavtika, no. 7 (1982), 4-5. 19 Lt. Col. A. Ladin, "Ascent Continues", Kranaya Zvezda, August 14, 1984, p. 2 stresses the need to look at other than mechanized assets for fighting in mountains. 20 Isby, Weapons and Tactics, pp. 157-160. 21 Jalali, "The Soviet Military Operation in Afghanistan." 22 John Gunston, "SU-24s, TU-16s Support Soviet Armed Forces," Aviation Week and Space Technology, 29 October, 1984, pp. 40-43. 23 For example, Field Regulations of the Red Army, 1929 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), translated as JPRS-UMA-85 13 March, 1985. Chapter 15, on warfare in special conditions, shows the long-standing Soviet interest, picking up on pre-1917 lessons. Peter Kruzhin, "Soviet Army Places Emphasis on Training For Mountain Warfare," Radio Liberty Research, Rl 252/83, 30 June, 1983. 24 Erickson, Hansen and Schneider, Soviet Ground Forces. 25 The elements of the tactics applied in Poland, politically and militarily, are detailed in: Lucja Swiatokowski, "The Imported Communist Revolution and the Civil War in Poland 1944-49," PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1982. 26 David Isby, "Soviet Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan, 1979-85." Report of Proceedings, Boeing Light Infantry Conference 1985 (Seattle), pp. 182-197. 27 Blaufarb and Tanham. 28 David C. Isby, "Spetznaz in Afghanistan," Military Technology, October, 1985. 29 Joseph Collins, The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. A Study in the Use of Force in Soviet Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Lexington Books, 1986), pp. 77-80. 30 "ACSI View Point: Soviet Use of Unconventional Warfare," Military Intelligence, October, 1982, p. 3. C. N. Donnelly, "Operations in The Enemy Rear", International Defense Review, issue 1 (1980), 37. John J. Dziak, "The Soviet Approach To Special Operations," in Frank R. Barnett, B. Hugh Tovar, and Richard H. Schultz, (eds), Special Operations in U.S. Strategy, (Washington, 1984), pp. 95-134. Viktor Suvorov, "Spetsnaz: The Soviet Union's Special Forces," International Defense Review issue 9 (1983), 1,212; reprinted in Military Review, March 1984, p. 30. Robert Williams and Arthur A. Zuehlke, "Unconventional Warfare Operations," Review of Soviet Ground Forces, October 1981, p. 3. Captain Tom Adams, "Special Operations Forces of the Soviet Union," Military Intelligence, October-December, 1982, p. 17. "Secrets of Spetsnaz." Foreign Report, no. 1811 (February 16, 1984), 4.

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31 David C. Isby, "Panjsher VII," Soldier of Fortune, vol. 10, no. 2 (February, 1985), 34. 32 David C. Isby, Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army (London: Jane's, 1988), pp. 397-99. 33 On Soviet reconnaissance in Afghanistan, see Isby, Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army, pp. 369-72. 34 Blaufarb and Tanham, pp. 11-11. 35 Blaufarb and Tanham, p. A-9. 36 Peter M. Dunn, "The American Army: The Vietnam War, 1965-73," in Beckett and Pimlott, pp. 87, 105. 37 Blaufarb and Tanham, p. F-5. 38 Blaufarb and Tanham, p. II—9. 39 David C. Isby, "Soviet Airmobile and Air Assault Brigades," Jane's Defense Week, vol. 14, no. 11 (September 14, 1985). David C. Isby, "The Vertical Threat: Air Assault and Airmobile Brigades of the Soviet Army," Amphibious Warfare Review, vol. 3, no. 1 (August 1985), 52. 40 Henry S. Bradsher, Afghanistan and the Soviet Union (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1985), pp. 113, 117, 149-153. Anthony Arnold, The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, 2nd edn (Stanford, 1985), pp. 96-111. 41 Andrew lives, "Soviet Admission of Failure in Afghanistan," Radio Liberty Research, RL 65/88, 18 February, 1988, p. 4. 42 lives, "Soviet Admission," pp. 87, 132. 43 Sayid Nairn Majrooh, "Soviet Strategy In the Wake of the Geneva Agreement," Afghan Information Centre Monthly Bulletin, no. 85 (April, 1988), 10-20. 44 "The Afghan Army's New Soldiers," Foreign Report, no. 2,016 (May 26,1988), 1-2. 45 On the Soviet control of KHAD/WAD, see: Joseph Collins, "Afghanistan: The Empire Strikes Out," Parameters, vol. 12, no. 1 (1982), 32-34. 46 "Zia Says Afghans Train Subversives," Washington Times, June 28, 1988, p. A7. 47 See Anthony Arnold, "The Soviet Threat to Pakistan" and Richard P. Cronin, "Pakistani Capabilities to Meet the Soviet Threat From Afghanistan," in Theodore L. Eliot, Jr. and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr. (eds.), The Red Army on Pakistan's Border (Washington: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1986). 48 Dr. S. B. Majrooh, "Afghan Militia Force: A New Failure of Kabul-Soviet Authorities," Afghan Information Centre Monthly Bulletin, no. 42 (September, 1984), 2-3. 49 Dr. S. B. Majrooh, "Situation in Kabul. Interview with a Chief Justice," Afghan Information Centre Monthly Bulletin, no. 38 (May, 1984), 10-11. 50 Ralph H. Magnus, "The PDPA regime in Afghanistan," in Peter J. Chelkowski and Robert J. Pranger (eds.), Ideology and Power In the Middle East, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988), pp. 274-296. 51 Ken Adelman, "Facing Up to Soviet Military Cuts." Washington Times, March 27, 1989, p. D3. 52 Alexander Prohankov, "Diary of a War Gone Mad," The Washington Post, May 1, 1988, p. C5. 53 Abdul Haq quoted at: Robert D. Kaplan, "Afghanistan Postmortem," The Atlantic, April, 1989, 26-29.

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54 A. Gorokhov, B. Kotov, V. Okulov, "Day of Hopes and Anxieties," Pravda (Moscow), May 15, 1988, pp. 1, 6. Richard M. Weintraub, "India Embraces Najibullah In Bid For Role In Afghanistan," Washington Post, May 17, 1988, p. A17. "India's Friend in Need," The Economist, May 7,1988, p. 28. "Russian Hopes For the Survival of the Regime," Afghan Information Centre Monthly Bulletin, no. 85 (April, 1988), 5-7. 55 Bill Keller, "Secret Soviet Party Documents Said to Admit Afghan Errors," The New York Times, June 17, 1988, pp. A l , A7. Richard Beeston, "Soviet Journal Blames USSR for Late 1970s Confrontation," The Washington Times, May 20, 1988, p. A8. Philip Taubman, "Soviet Afghan Drive Called Decision of a Few," The New York Times, March 30, 1988, p. A l l . Aaron Trehub, "Boglomov Reveals Opposition to Afghan Invasion," Radio Liberty Research, RL 116/88, March 17, 1988. The exoneration of both Chiefs of General Staff is by Varrenikov in Borovik, "Afghanistan: Summing Up," Radio Liberty Research, RL 116/88, March 17, 1988, p. 1. 56 Colonel General Nikolai Chevrov in February 10 broadcast, reported at FBIS, Soviet Union Daily Report, February 13, 1989, pp. 34-35. 57 O. Bogmolov, "But Who Was Mistaken," Literaturnaya Gazeta, March 16, 1988, p. 10, translated at FBIS, Soviet Union Daily Report, March 15, 1988, p. 19. Ikuda, "Academician Says Troops in Afghanistan 'Mistake'," Ashai Shimbun (Tokyo), March 12,1988, p. 6, translated at FBIS, Soviet Union Daily Report, March 15, 1988, p. 2. 58 An example of the criticism of Afghanistan policy as not being "thought through" is: "International Situation - Questions and Answers" Program, February 10, 1989, translated at FBIS, Soviet Union Daily Report, February 13, 1988, pp. 35-36, p. 35. 59 Criticisms of the Soviet decision to invade, including with it a reduced assessment of the utility of military force in international relations, include: Professor Vyacheslav Dashichev, "East-West: Quest for New Relations. On the Priorities of the Soviet State's Foreign Policy," Literaturnaya Gazeta, May 18, 1988, p. 14, translated at FBIS, Soviet Union Daily Report, May 20, 1988, pp. 4-8. 60 "Soviet General Talks of Failure in Afghanistan," The New York Times, January 23, 1989, p. A5. "General in Kabul Says Red Army Falls Short," The Washington Post, January 23, 1989, p. A12. 61 Jiri Valenta, "From Prague to Kabul: The Soviet Style of Invasion," International Security, Fall, 1980, pp. 124-127. 62 "Adopt Afghan Lessons, Urges Gen Grekov," Jane's Defence Weekly, June 24, 1989, p. 1,332. Frank Steinert, LTC Kerry Hines, "Afghanistan's Impact on Soviet Military Literature," Review of the Soviet Ground Forces, July 1982, pp. 13-16. Douglas M. Hart, "Low-Intensity Conflict in Afghanistan: the Soviet View," Survival, vol. 24, no. 2 (March-April, 1982), 61-8. 63 On Gromov, see LTC V. Nikanorov, LTC A. Olinyik, MAJ A. Burgbyga, "The Commanding General," Krasnaya Zvezda, May 14, 1988, p. 2. Bill Keller, "Boris V. Gromov: Even in Retreat, a Hero to the Russians," New York Times, February 16, 1989, p. A8. 64 "Adopt Afghan Lessons". Examples of explicit use of Afghan combat experience in tactical writing are widespread. A few of the many recent examples

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66 67 68

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include: CPT V. Alekseenko, "There are No Trivialities in Combat," Voyenniy Vestnik, no. 6 (1988), 70-72 (an Afghanistan veteran on infantry weapons use); Guards CPT I. Zaporoahan, HSU, "When Training is Hard, Fighting Is Easy," Voyenniy Vestnik, no. 4 (1987), 10-21. Other examples where Afghanistan experience has directly fed into broader Soviet tactics and procedures include: Col. E. Shapiro, "Controlled Exercises In Driving the BMP," Voyenniy Vestnik, no. 5 (1986), 45-7. LTC A. Kostuchenko, "A Ticketless System of Control," Voyenniy Vestnik, no. 4 (1987), pp. 28-31. "Adopt Afghan Lessons." Christopher Donnelly, "Future Trends in Soviet Military-Technical Policy," paper given at the Institute for Defense Analysis, Alexandria, VA, June, 1988, p. 13. Graham H. Turbiville, Jr., "Ambush: The Road War in Afghanistan," Army, January 1988, pp. 32-42. Donnelly, "Future Trends", p. 21. The Kulikov interview appeared in the Yugoslavian weekly Danas, March 14, 1987, translated at BBC, Summary of World Broadcasts, EE/8549/C4. MG Valentin Larionov (rtd.) quoted from at a conference on Soviet military doctrine held at Norfolk, Virginia, May 27, 1989. Bernard E. Trainor, "Afghans and the Soviet Psyche: Military Myths Fade as Troops Pull Out," New York Times, February 15, 1989, p. A12. Bernard E. Trainor, "For Soviets in Kabul, One Last Road," New York Times, January 28, 1989, pp. 1,5. Additional information supplied by LTG Trainor. Nicholas Daniloff, "Afghan War Finally Hits Soviet Home Front," US News and World Report, December 16, 1985, pp. 41-2. Sallie Wise, "The Soviet Public and the War in Afghanistan: A Trend Towards Polarization," paper of Soviet Area Audience and Opinion Research, Radio Liberty-Radio Free Europe, March, 1987. An example of this can be seen in: Bill Keller, "Soviet Muslims Seek Leader's Ouster," New York Times, February 6, 1989, p. A3. This has been widely documented, most recently and thoroughly in Alexander Alexiev, Inside the Soviet Army In Afghanistan, R-3627-A (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1988). The issue of why the Soviets were not defeated was addressed in a number of Soviet sources covering the final withdrawal, including: Yu. Glukhov, "Summing Up," Pravda, February 15, 1989, pp. 1, 4. Translated at FBIS, Soviet Union Daily Report, February 15, 1989, pp. 20-2. John F. Burns, "An Army With Its Spirit in Disarray," New York Times, February 7, 1989, p. A10. John F. Burns, "Soviets Are Glum About Kabul's Future," New York Times, February 10, 1989, p. A8. Ralph Boulton, "Military Brass Tarnished by Defeats in Soviet Elections," Washington Times, March 31, 1989, p. A7. An example of the discussion of the costs and benefits of Afghanistan can be seen at: Lyudmila Shchipakina, "Motherland is Welcoming Its Sons," Krasnaya Zvezda, May 22, 1988, p. 2, translated at FBIS, Soviet Union Daily Report, FBIS-SOV-88-100, May 24, 1988, pp. 33-4. Letter to the author, November 17, 1988. Peter Adams, "Disinformation Kinder, Gentler, But Still Exists," Defense News, March 6, 1989, p. 13. Zalmay Khalilzad, "Afghanistan: A Propaganda

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Problem For Moscow," in US Department of State, Contemporary Soviet Propaganda and Disinformation, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1987. 79 Elizabeth Engue, "Soviet Author Repudiates 'Brezhnev Doctrine,'" Radio Liberty Research, RL 4/88, December 20, 1985. 80 Francis Fukuyama, "Soviet Strategy in the Third World," in Andrzej Korbonski and Francis Fukuyama (eds.), The Soviet Union and the Third World. The Last Three Decades (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 24-45, 35-40. 81 Ye. Primakov, "Novaya Filosofiya Vneshney Politiki," (New Philosophy of External Policy), Pravda, July 10, 1987, p. 4 (author's translation).

8

New weapons and the attempts at technical change Mikhail Tsypkin

The Soviets measure performance of their military R&D system by geopolitical gains obtained through acquiring and deploying new weapons. Nuclear weapons and ICBM projects of the 1940s and 1950s are viewed as highly successful because their output (izdelie, "product," in the slang of oboronka, the Soviet defense industry) changed the geopolitical landscape by exposing for the first time the United States to a potentially devastating attack. 1 While the Soviet geopolitical retreat has been obvious, and Gorbachev has proclaimed that conflicts in the modern era should be solved by political rather than military means, the Soviet/Russian elites have not renounced their claim to a superpower status, and the facts of geography as well as of their nuclear arsenal would hardly let them do so. In consequence, the Soviets still need to perfect their tools of war. The Soviet military R&D system has been the product of policies and practices from the 1930-1940s.2 Today the whole Stalinist politicaleconomic system is characterized by extensive entropy. The military R&D system might also be expected to undergo a metamorphosis. This is happening just at a time when Soviet military forecasters foresee a "revolution in military affairs" triggered by emerging radically new technologies. This might mean radically new military R&D requirements, especially in view of Gorbachev's proclaimed doctrinal change from quantity to quality of weapons at the time when the Soviet leaders are concerned about their lagging science and technology. What is the decisionmaking system for military R&D today? What are the problems of military R&D as seen by the Soviets today, what is its heritage? What are the likely tasks that the Soviet military R&D system is now facing? Can it handle these tasks? How are Gorbachev's innovations in politics and economics and military affairs likely to affect military R&D? Decision-making for military R&D The patterns of decision-making were established more than fifty years ago, and have been characterized by extensive pressure from both the Com187

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munist Party and the military to overcome relative Soviet technological backwardness (vis-a-vis Germany, and later the United States and other NATO nations) and to obtain weapons of more or less comparable quality to their opponents. 3 The Communist Party, because of the loss of its constitutional status of the ruling party, should have lost its decision-making power in military R&D matters. The Defense Council, which resolves all major military issues, including weapons acquisition, appears to have been subordinated directly to the USSR President-Commander-in-Chief, in contrast to its previous closer attachment to the Politburo. Its membership includes the USSR president, defense minister, three first deputy defense ministers, and representatives of the defense industry. But just as Gorbachev the President has been reluctant to relinquish the post of the Communist Party leader, so has the Central Committee of the CPSU continued its involvement in affairs of the state, including military R&D. The military commission of the Central Committee includes a number of prominent military officers and defense industrialists.4 In late 1988 Gorbachev reorganized the Central Committee in order to reduce the role of its Secretariat and staff organized in functional departments. 5 Nevertheless, the Department of Defense Industry has been preserved under the Secretary of the Central Committee directly responsible for defense industry, Oleg Baklanov. It continues to have the crucial responsibility for top appointments in the defense industry. 6 The top government body involved in military R&D decision-making is the Military-Industrial Commission (Voenno-promyshlennaya komissiya VPK) of the USSR Council of Ministers, chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister Igor Belousov.7 Its job is to coordinate the many compartmented branches of the Soviet defense industry. There has been no perceptible change in the institutional arrangements for military R&D decision-making within the Ministry of Defense (MOD). In addition to the Deputy Minister of Defense for Armaments and his staff, each service and service branch has its own Scientific and Technological Directorate, whose job is to "solve numerous problems" related to R&D, testing, mass production, operation and maintenance and repair of weapons. 8 The General Staff has its own Scientific and Technological Committee (or possibly Department) tasked with coordinating S&T policies for the armed forces.9 Traditionally these bodies have driven the general direction of military R&D because of the armed forces' special position as the guarantor of external and internal security, and because of the military's past role as the only expert on defense matters to the political leadership. This overwhelming influence, however, appears to be on the wane, at

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least temporarily. Military prestige may have suffered from the loss of the Afghanistan war, as well as from a strategic fiasco resulting from the deployment of SS-20s. At the same time, acute economic problems have made the Soviet leaders look for savings in the defense industry. Therefore the political leadership might be less inclined to let the military and the defense industry monopolize expertise in these areas. A slice of bureaucratic turf might have been taken by civilian scientists and international affairs specialists from the USSR Academy of Sciences, who have reportedly had a serious impact upon Gorbachev's arms control positions and "new thinking." The military, however, have recently stepped up their attacks against the civilian specialist's encroachments on the military's turf.10 An emergence of the two-stage legislature (although obviously with a limited power), the Supreme Soviet elected by the Congress of People's Deputies added one more institutional actor to military R&D decisionmaking. The Supreme Soviet has established a Committee on Defense and State Security - the KOGB. The composition of the new Committee is of crucial importance. The KOGB has forty-three members. Of these, twelve appear to be employed by Soviet defense industry, including the leaders of the Sukhoi and Ilyushin aircraft design bureaus. Mikhail Simonov, the leader of the Sukhoi "firm," chairs the KOGB's subcommittee on defense industry. The membership includes six military officers, three of them high-ranking (former Chief of General Staff and now advisor to Gorbachev Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, Army General Vitaliy Shabanov, the Chief of Armaments of the Soviet Armed Forces, and Admiral Vitaliy Ivanov, Commander of the Baltic Fleet); one of the middle-ranking officers on the Committee, Lt. Colonel Viktor Podziruk, appears to be a maverick who defeated the commander of Soviet forces in Germany during the elections to the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989. One member is an official of the DOSAAF - a "voluntary" society to assist the military. Three are high-ranking KGB officers. Eight are party and government officials, including two high-ranking party officials in charge of defense industry - Oleg Belyakov, the head of the Central Committee Department of Defense Industry, and Arkadiy Vol'skiy, the former head of the Central Committee Department of Machine Building Industry and also until recently the Kremlin's pro-consul in the disputed Nagornyy Karabakh area of Azerbaijan. Two are scientists, physicists and Academy members Yevgeniy Velikhov and Andrei Gaponov-Grekhov, both rumored to have a long standing involvement with defense work. This accounts for thirty-two members of the KOGB. The rest are educators, industry executives, and three reformist intellectuals: Byelorussian writer Vasil' Bykov (intensely disliked by the ortho-

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dox ideologists and the military since the 1960s for his unlacquered portrayal of World War II), and two social scientists from Estonia and Lithuania, one of whom, Mechis Laurinkus, is a member of the Lithuanian mass nationalist movement, the Sajudis, which has a very adversarial relationship with the Soviet military. The Baltic deputies, however, no longer take part in the work of the Supreme Soviet. (The third Baltic deputy in KOGB, Velio Vare, is a retired military officer now working in a historical research institute in Estonia.) 11 The KOGB first chairman, Professor Vladimir Lapygin, has spent all his life in the Soviet aerospace industry. He is a specialist on missile guidance, and has been a General Designer for the on-board control system of the Soviet space shuttle Burcm, a controversial project criticized recently for bureaucratic selfishness and irrational management of the space program. Lapygin was elected not in Moscow, where he lives and works, but in the distant Siberian Tuva autonomous republic with which he has no apparent connection - a clear sign that he was designated as a Deputy to the Congress of People's Deputies and eventually to the Supreme Soviet by the Communist Party apparatus. The positions Lapygin staked out made him sound as a party loyalist: he believed that the mission of KOGB is to ensure "combat readiness" of the Soviet Armed Forces; he warned against "unilateral disarmament" and excessive zeal in conversion of defense industry for civilian needs; he viewed with suspicion the nationalists in the three Baltic republics, and saw professional competence (in defense industry, military, or state security) of deputies in KOGB as essential for the Committee's work - the same emphasis on "competence" now so much in vogue among the military trying to fend off their civilian critics. The pro-military bias of the KOGB has been noted by Academician and People's Deputy Georgiy Arbatov, who criticized it as "having a strange membership and working in a strange fashion," and as very secretive.12 One of the few radical members of the KOGB has revealed that the majority of the Committee's members believe that "the West still is threatening [the USSR], that our country may become a victim of aggression at any time." 13 In 1990, Lapygin was replaced as KOGB chairman (allegedly, because of his preoccupation with his defense industry work) by Leonid Shazin, a party official. At this point we can only speculate about the possible impact of these institutional changes. From the 1930s to the 1960s the military R&D process was characterized by a high degree of Communist Party intervention. Stalin originally set priorities, evaluated weapons prototypes, and organized supplies for R&D. Khrushchev inherited Stalin's pattern of involvement: Khrushchev forcefully set priorities, and thus seriously constrained several areas of military R&D (aircraft, surface ships) while

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promoting others (missiles, submarines, nuclear weapons). There is no direct information on Brezhnev's involvement in military R&D decisionmaking. It was generally his style to seek the widest consensus possible. The hope was to satisfy all the powerful bureaucratic interests who could potentially be political threats. 14 At the same time, the Communist Party was empowered to defend its power by incessant interference in all spheres of life. Political interference where it was not needed, lack of political intervention where it would have been helpful might have been the style of Brezhnev's leadership. According to a veteran of the aerospace industry and R&D, party and government interference under Brezhnev entangled R&D leaders in "directives, instructions, bans and incompetent advice." 15 The new tasks Soviet military officers frequently engage in forecasting-cum-lobbying for new weapons. The tradition goes back to Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevskiy, the Red Army Chief of Ordnance from 1931 to 1937, who focused on predicting the weapons of the future and analyzing their impact on warfare. He established a canon for such writings by the Soviet military: firstly, he looked not so much into the immediate but rather mid- and long term future; in the early 1930s, for instance he wrote about the use of rocket propulsion for stratospheric bomber aircraft; and secondly, he used the "scientific" nature of Marxist-Leninism to give his predictions an aura of inevitability, a convenient approach to promoting one's favorite weapon programs! Some of the influential post-World War II Soviet pronouncements on military technology had the same dual character. (For example, Military Strategy edited by Marshal Vasiliy Sokolovskiy in the 1960s formulated requirements for a global nuclear warfighting capability which became attainable only by the late 1970s/early 1980s) and historical determinism (e.g. Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov's disquisition on "dialectically" inevitable development of new generations of weapons, each "negating" the previous one). 16 What is the relationship between such forecasts and military R&D? According to David Holloway, the Soviet military have believed that evolving technologies determine doctrine; nevertheless, doctrinal requirements serve as "the 'organizing principle' in the formulation of a project," and because of the "high political priority" accorded the needs of the military they also play, in generally sedate Soviet science and technology, "a key role in stimulating innovation and in giving direction to the military research and development effort."17 Experience shows Soviet military doctrine to be a relevant guide to future trends in military R&D. 18

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The Soviets view evolution of warfare as a dialectical process, divided into qualitatively different stages by "revolutions in military affairs," which are ushered in by radical innovations in weapon technologies. Thus, Soviet military thinking throughout the 1960s and 1970s reflected the "revolution in military affairs" which resulted "from the breakthrough in nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. " 1 9 In the early 1980s, Soviet military spokesmen, led by such authoritative figures as Chief of General Staff Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov and First Deputy Chief of the General Staff Col. General Makhmout Gareyev, began to speak of a new "revolution" in military affairs. Other members of the Soviet military establishment then engaged in formulating doctrinal requirements to weapons of the future. 20 From 1990 to the year 2000, the Soviet forecasters expected "continuing modernization of the traditional types of conventional weapons," of strategic defensive and offensive systems, but "seemfed] focused more upon . . . a new family of highly accurate, precision-guided delivery systems for nonnuclear munitions." From 2000 to 2010, the Soviets forecasted a concentration on "subsequent generations of conventional weaponry, the widespread application of low-observable technologies, and, in particular, increasing tactical applications for weapons based on new physical principles . . ." 21 If these forecasts are in fact requirements, then Soviet military R&D will have to perform exceedingly well to meet simultaneously these complex challenges. The military seem to believe that it is not enotigh to have the "most weighty [vesomyy] store of military means," but that victory will come to the side which "leads in developing and deploying qualitatively new [weapon] systems." A similar point was made by the former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.22 The role of military R&D is therefore particularly important, especially in the aftermath of Gorbachev's proposal to ensure Soviet security through superior quality rather than quantity of more reliable weapons with improved "combat specifications."23 This doctrinal shift seems logical because the Soviets (1) have to reduce the armed forces and (2) are planning on manufacturing fewer new weapons, apparently because of economic and manpower constraints. 24 Gorbachev's pledge of unilateral cuts of conventional forces and his flexibility in conventional arms control have been accompanied by a military emphasis on developing qualitatively new weapons. According to Army General Aleksei Lizichev, the former Chief of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Armed forces, the goal is to provide for a transition from the "evolutionary method of perfecting weapons (when in the course of a replacement of a generation of a given weapon only improvement of its combat characteristics was planned) to a qualitative leap method (when a weapon acquires new-in-principle combat capabilities). This transition is to

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be carried out on the basis of wider utilization of the results of fundamental, experimental and applied research. This approach will allow us to develop new production technologies and make our weapons highly reliable and technologically accomplished. At this stage it is important to intensify the activities of R&D institutions in this direction.25 Soviet military R&D needs to establish its priorities. The formula for weapons acquisition during Brezhnev's era (the armed forces were supposed to be supplied with "everything necessary to reliably defend the homeland") was replaced in 1986 by a more flexible declaration (the armed forces will receive "everything to ensure that the imperialist countries do not attain military superiority"). 26 Soviet military commentators have indicated that the new formula means concentrating R&D efforts on key projects at the expense of others deemed less important: [This formula] makes it necessary to provide forfirst-prioritydevelopment of such types of weapons and military hardware that are crucial for the military might of the army and navy, for their ability to carry out successfully the mission of motherland's defense from aggression under any condition.27 How are these priorities to be established? The concept of "reasonable sufficiency" promoted within the framework of "new thinking" emphasizes that "there is a law of diminishing returns in the arms race: marginal improvements of military power come at ever greater c o s t . . . [and] add less and less to the net military capability of the state." According to "new thinkers," the much wealthier United States has successfully attempted to exhaust the Soviets inducing an arms race and "compelling the Soviet Union to buy inappropriate military hardware . . . Reasonable sufficiency could neutralize this Western strategy via resort to asymmetric responses: reacting to US and NATO actions with offsetting rather than emulating responses . . . Thus, for example, the Soviet Union would respond to SDI with an offensive build-up, not an 'SDI-sky' program." 28 Another aspect of the "new thinking" is "defensive defense," i.e., "a force posture and military strategy sufficient to repel a conventional attack, but insufficient for a surprise attack with massive offensive operations against the territory of the other side." 29 Among other things, "defensive defense" presupposes "reducing the share of offensive and increasing the share of defensive weapons in the armed forces." 30 Indeed, the Chief of the General Staff Army General Mikhail Moiseev proclaimed that in the spirit of the new "defensive doctrine" [m]any future technical projects utilizing strike [udarnyy] weapon systems have been excluded from the plans of military science and design bureaus. At the same time, priority directions [of R&D] promising to raise the effectiveness of repulsing aggression, have been selected.31

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Thus the "new thinking" raises serious questions for the work of military R&D system. How is an optimal asymmetric response to be determined? When is an asymmetric response appropriate and when is it not? Which weapons are defensive and which are offensive? (Is the SS-20 IRBM, a subject of much criticism in the Soviet media, an example of an offensive "bad" weapon? Are tanks similarly "bad?") 32 The importance of such questions naturally goes far beyond their impact on military R&D system, but their novelty as well as an obvious lack of agreement on an interpretation of the "new thinking" will put R&D of weapons into a turbulent climate. This turbulence has been increased by Gorbachev's ongoing reshaping of the Communist Party and Soviet Government. The top military officers, for their part, seem to be at best puzzled and at worst hostile to the innovations in military doctrine promoted for the most part by civilian academics apparently on behalf of some top Party leaders. Statements by Soviet high-ranking military officers and defense industry executives testify to the problems they have understanding the implications of defensive doctrine. Take the general concept of defensive sufficiency. No less a figure than the Soviet Minister of Defense Army General Dmitriy Yazov warned against forgetting the experience of the Nazi invasion of 1941 ("We should not allow its repetition."), and continued: "we must have not only sufficient but also unconditionally reliable defense . . ." 33 But what kind of defensive sufficiency can be practiced if you do not exclude the possibility of a major invasion and want to have an absolute military guarantee of repelling it? Or take the concept of defensive character of military strategy. General Moiseev says that in the initial period of war Soviet operations will be defensive in nature, although the enemy would not be allowed to have the initiative.34 The apparent implication is that once the initial period of war is over, and the enemy is stopped, the Soviet forces would go on the offensive. But the forces required for the eventual offensive must be structured and armed accordingly, which contradicts the proclaimed defensive restructuring of the Soviet Armed Forces. Even more confusing is the concept of eliminating the "strike weapons" with outstanding offensive characteristics. Soviet navy C-in-C fleet Admiral Chernavin, for instance, proclaimed the first Soviet "real" aircraft carrier Tbilisi (recently renamed Admiral Kuznetsov) to be a defensive weapon and dismissed as "simplistic" an interpretation of the defensive doctrine: when we are asked today whether building aircraft carriers contradicts our defensive doctrine, my answer is: no. We see their main mission as carrying fighter aircraft, which can provide cover to our ships at a great distance where shorebased fighter aviation is of no help. This defensive mission is integral to the new Tbilisi

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aircraft carrier . . . But what does defensive mean? Some people understand it in a simplistic and primitive way. They think that once we have adopted such a doctrine, we can be only a passive side, be on the defensive, retreat in case of conflict into the depth of our territory. But modern war - on land, at sea, and in the air - is above all the war of maneuver. How can a combat ship fight while "sitting in a trench?" A submarine must find and sink enemy. The mission of surface ships is, when necessary, to launch missile strikes against the enemy without waiting for him to enter our territorial waters.35 Chernavin's statement illustrates the predicament the Soviet military find themselves in trying to determine which types of operations and weapons are defensive. Some military R&D leaders betray an open self-interest in their definitions: for instance, the Deputy General Designer of the Tupolev Design Bureau A. Kandalov described the TU-160 Blackjack strategic bomber as a defensive weapon - because it has been allegedly designed "as a counterweight" to the American B-l strategic bomber! 36 Soviet military R&D: the heritage Quality problems Do the Soviets have reason to worry about the new "quality-rather-thanquantity" doctrine? One meaning of "quality" is developing and building weapons which incorporate cutting edge technologies earlier or no later than the opponent. According to a recent Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, "of 30 types of weapons systems identified . . . the [US] is ahead of the Soviets in 15 categories, equal in 10, and behind in 5 . . . The US is losing its edge in 10 categories in which it leads the Soviets, and is falling behind in 4 categories in which it now equals the Soviets." 37 But the Soviets are not sanguine. The DIA assessment largely reflects the balance of existing technologies, while the Soviets are concerned about the technologies yet to be deployed, or even developed in the course of the new "revolution in military affairs." They are extremely anxious about their ability to compete with free market democracies. Gorbachev's doctrine of providing for Soviet military needs through quality rather than quantity of armaments leaves little room for a techological lag. Some progress in replacing "quantity" with "quality" had been made before Gorbachev made it doctrine: highly sophisticated weapon systems such as the Typhoon SSBN and Blackjack strategic bomber had been put on the drawing board in the 1970s and entered series production in the 1980s. Nevertheless, the new doctrine comes into collision with the tradition of substituting larger quantity for lower quality. This tradition was clearly formulated in the late 1930s by a towering figure in Soviet military R&D, aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev:

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The country needs aircraft like it needs black bread. Of course, you can imagine pralines, tortes, etc., but to no purpose - we haven't the ingredients to make them. From this it follows: (a) that we must develop a doctrine concerning the missions which aviation is to perform, and that doctrine must be based on a realistic conception of the capabilities of projected aircraft; (b) that on the basis of technology and production processes which have already been assimilated, we must turn out long production runs of those aircraft which correspond to that doctrine; (c) that if these aircraft fall somewhat behind those in the West in terms of technology - to hell with them: we'll get by on quantity; and (d) that in order to prevent quality from falling too far behind quantity, the design bureau should (i) concentrate on the technology of constructing experimental aircraft, without being burdened with responsibility for series production, and (ii) work on two basic tasks: designing aircraft intended for production and designing purely experimental aircraft used to achieve technological breakthroughs.38 This approach has provided the Soviet military with incrementally improved, relatively inexpensive and reliable weapons. But it is not entirely adequate for providing the Soviet armed forces with high quality weapons, especially those based on "new-in-principle" technologies (that is, using scientific and technological foundations unknown or not used militarily earlier). Point (a) in Tupolev's philosophy - basing the doctrine on "a realistic conception of the capabilities" of projected weapons - contradicts the corner stone of Gorbachev's military doctrine which prescribes a military capability providing for a "strategic parity" with the "imperialism" achieved not through quantitative preponderance but through world class quality of new weapons. Tupolev's point (b) has been echoed in some authoritative Soviet statements made early in Gorbachev's reign. 39 It is deeply rooted in the Soviet military R&D tradition. But it again contradicts the "qualitative" bias of Gorbachev's military doctrine. Former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, laying out the foundations of "new thinking," argued that a nation is strengthened by a robust science and R&D community capable of quickly responding to new threats rather than by stockpiling mountains of weapons which quickly become obsolete.40 Tupolev's point (d) reflects the caution of a prudent leader of Soviet military R&D. Faced with an uneven industrial base, uncertain supplies, and military commanders and industry managers, who were ready to turn weapon designers into scapegoats, he concentrated on what was producible while quietly experimenting with novel technologies in anticipation of an eventual demand. But such circumspection contradicts the current vision of defense R&D and industry rapidly reacting to the latest scientific and technological breakthroughs.

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Dr. Konstantin Feoktistov (who led the teams which designed the Vostok, Voskhod and Soyuz manned spacecraft) has recently addressed the issue of alternative patterns of R&D and production of "new-in-principle" weapons. He sees two possible approaches: to follow the patterns of the largely unsuccessful Soviet rocket project of the 1930s, designing and building experimental models of a new weapon in very small numbers in order to "accumulate experience necessary for making future decisions" (essentially a pattern advocated by Tupolev), or to follow the pattern of the German rocket project, immediately linking R&D to mass production of radically new weapons, V-l winged and V-2 ballistic rockets. 41 The implication is obvious: if the systemic timidity is not overcome, the race for new technologies will not be won. There are also deficiencies in the Soviet military R&D system itself, which became pronounced during Brezhnev's "stagnation." The Soviets today can mass produce sophisticated weapons, but they also complain about poor reliability (a phenomenon illustrated by the well-publicized disasters of Soviet nuclear submarines in the 1980s). Indeed, they have equated the shift from quantity to quality with "radically increasing" not only the weapons' "combat specifications" but also their "reliability." 42 Military R&D has also become less productive. Spending per worker in military R&D has apparently increased, while productivity has declined.43 Vladimir Kontorovich, an economist specializing in Soviet civilian and military R&D has suggested some reasons for this decline: Military R&D institutions, controlled both by the Ministry of Defense and civilian agencies, focus on military's demands. If the military fail to formulate requirements in an optimal way, the R&D institutions "are unlikely to direct resources productively on their own." The number of military R&D institutions "dilutes . . . the supply priority" accorded to them. Incrementalism in the R&D process slows down technological progress. The "rigidity of organizational structure, security of tenure and feudal relationships" between leaders of R&D institutions and their subordinates result, in the period of "slowing growth," in an "aging research portfolio and aging staff," and in an increase of the "share of exhausted topics and people." 44 This diagnosis appears to have been confirmed by Minister of Defense Army General Dmitriy Yazov, who complains of conservatism and "mestnichestvo" (an almost untranslatable Russian term, which in this context means "bureaucratic selfishness") in military R&D system, of "military mistakes" in giving direction to R&D, of poor R&D organization, and of

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deteriorating "experimental and testing" R&D facilities. In addition, the military R&D system suffered under Brezhnev from the meteoric rise of opportunistic conformists who suppressed the more gifted individuals.45 The ageing of the experts is well illustrated by the fact that the same man who began the work on liquid-fuel rockets in 1929, Valentin Glushko, was the Chief Designer of the Buran-Energiya space launch system until his death in 1989 at the age of eighty.46 The tempo of military R&D has slowed. Reflecting on their experience with the Soviet space program in the 1950s, some of its participants blame the present slow rate of aerospace R&D work on growing bureaucratization between the aerospace industry and the government, as well as among different sectors within the aerospace R&D community. 47 Has the growth of the military R&D system been so great as to result in "diluted" supplies as suggested by Kontorovich? Academician Roal'd Sagdeev, the former Director of the Institute of Space Research estimated that about 70 per cent of R&D and scientific personnel in Moscow (the center of Soviet R&D and science) are directly engaged in military work. 48 While the military R&D system has grown, it has so far retained its superiority in equipment and support over the rest of Soviet industry. Yet it has begun to lose its advantage in skilled manpower because salaries in other branches of industry have become more competitive, while more workers refuse to live with the "demands of heightened responsibility . . . for the quality of the output, and with certain restrictions [apparently, secrecy] which are in no way compensated by the pay." 49 Innovation and foreign technology What is the impact of Western controls over technology transfers to the Soviet Union? Can the Soviets independently innovate in military R&D and thus respond "asymmetrically" to Western developments, as suggested by Gorbachev? Is the Soviet military R&D process driven by Western innovations? The Soviet position on these issues is contradictory. On one hand, they insist on the complete independence of their militaryindustrial potential. On the other hand, they maintain that Soviet weapon developments simply respond to the developments in the West. How important is foreign technology to Soviet military R&D? This question has received much attention in the West because of debates over technology export controls and over illegal Soviet acquisitions of militarily significant Western technologies. In the early 1980s the French intelligence obtained documents from the Soviet Military-Industrial Commission (VPK) which confirmed the importance of illegally-obtained technology for Soviet weapons production. In 1979 and 1980, for example, the

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directorate T of the KGB in charge of illegal acquisitions of technology, was working on about 3,000 acquisition tasks; the clandestine acquisition effort has, according to Philip Hanson, a "systematic and extensive character." Many Soviet weapons projects have benefited from illegal acquisition of Western technology: phased array radar, computerized aircraft weapons control systems, manufacture of fiberglass air-tanks for submarines, etc. According to the same documents, the Soviets "saved some five years of development time" by using documentation on the US F-18 fighter; "moreover, F-18 and F-14 documentation served as the impetus for two long-term research projects to design from scratch a new radar-guided air-to-air missile system." 50 The then Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov described the high technology transfer restrictions imposed against the Soviet Union by COCOM (the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls including all NATO nations but Iceland plus Japan) as an attempt to "upset the military-strategic parity" between East and West. Soviet plans for "restructuring" world politics ostensibly for the benefit of impoverished third world nations inevitably propose a ban on technology embargoes, an issue hardly of great concern to Chad or Nigeria. Aleksandr Yakovlev, at the time the Chairman of the CPSU Commission on International Relations, and then Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze insisted that export controls on military significant technologies are inconsistent with a new thaw in East-West relations. 51 Krasnaya zvezda, the Ministry of Defense daily, recently confronted the impact of the West's tighter technology export controls in the early 1980s. It said that the Soviet Union responded with Program 100 (Programma 100), named so because the goal was to replace 100 different products denied by the embargo. This offers some idea of Soviet military dependence on imports: new export controls resulted in a loss of at least one hundred products important enough to be selected for a crash effort! Krasnaya zvezda argued that Program 100 was a complete success of native scientific and technical genius. According to the same newspaper, it took Soviet science, R&D and industry only three years to replace the loss. Given that the research-to-production cycle in Soviet military R&D systems averages ten to thirteen years, much of the success might be credited to increased Soviet illegal acquisitions.52 The need for high technology imports does not by itself explain the dynamics of the relationship between Soviet military R&D and Western (including Japanese) scientific and technological progress. The Soviets have traditionally used Western instruments to equip their military R&D facilities.53 Moscow relies heavily on Western information, both obtained openly and covertly, on the latest developments in military technology.54 The VPK documents cited above boast about the successes of translating

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illegal acquisitions into military hardware. But how beneficial to Soviet military R&D is such information in reality? Do Western developments stimulate similar Soviet developments?55 The Soviets frequently enter a new field of military technology by copying a state-of-the-art foreign (usually American) weapon, as they did with the Sidewinder air-to-air missile in the late 1950s-early 1960s and even with a magnetron "pulled from an American radio-locator CSCR" in 1943-44. 56 Copying may be useful if it proves "the Soviet engineers' qualifications" and that materials produced by Soviet industry are sufficient for building a successful weapon based on the best design available internationally. 57 But what happens afterwards? A talented R&D leader could use a successful copy to advance his own ideas, as did helicopter Chief Designer Mikhail Mil'. After incorporating many features of a Sikorsky design in his Mi-4, he used his newly won prestige to promote his original idea of large transport helicopters (the Mi-6 and Mi-10 family). The social and political environment of the last 20 years, however, has not spawned a post-Khrushchevian generation of powerful R&D leaders. In their place are technically competent but essentially cautious bureaucrats who focus only on incremental improvements in technology.58 It is probable that they have continued to copy Western designs rather than risking domestic innovation. Defense Minister Yazov hinted at this shortcoming: research and development have been going along the beaten track, have been reduced in essence to copying . . . new non-traditional approaches to development of weapons . . . have not been sought.59 The dangers of depending on copies of Western technology have been understood by the older generation of Soviet military R&D leaders. Dr. Anatoliy Aleksandrov, the former President of the USSR Academy of Sciences and a prominent nuclear weapons developer, has warned repeatedly that too much borrowing from the West will undermine native scientific and R&D capability. He recently revealed that the famous Soviet physicist Petr Kapitsa did not participate in the Soviet A-bomb project because he believed that following the American logic of A-bomb development (as the Soviets apparently did), rather than pursuing a completely original path, would doom the Soviets to a perennial lag in the nuclear competition. 60 Stalin, for his part, tended to make weapon designers copy Western models. Tupolev, for example, was ordered to reverse engineer the American B-29 bomber which became the Soviet Tu-4 while Stalin pressured Sergei Korolev to simply copy the German V-2 rocket rather than modify it. 61 Views similar to Academician Aleksandrov are held by Dr. Anatoliy

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Fedoseev, the designer of the first Soviet magnetron (a powerful vacuum tube for radar). He has stated that "simply copying" Western hardware would be suicidal for Soviet military technology because materials used in the West are frequently unavailable, and because evaluating Western examples can add five years to the original research-to-production process.62 Does this mean that significant innovation in Soviet military R&D is unlikely without Western stimuli? There is little doubt that a weapon or prototype readied for mass production can stimulate the Soviet development. This was the case with helicopters. While Mikhail Mil' had designed his first Mi-1 helicopter only as an experimental machine, it took the US use of helicopters in the Korean War to push the Soviet military toward a crash R&D and production effort. In a similar fashion, the Soviet shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile Strela was inspired by a "photograph . . . on the cover of an American technical magazine." 63 The decision-making pattern, however, has been different for strategic weapons. The Soviet work on the A-bomb, although greatly accelerated by the news of the American success in 1945, began in earnest in 1942/43 because of information about nuclear weapons R&D projects in the US and Germany, both still in their early stages.64 David Hollo way has shown that it was the information (without sufficient technical detail) on the beginning of American R&D of thermonuclear weapons, rather than the later decision to build such weapons that gave impetus to the similar Soviet effort. Indeed, Andrei Sakharov said that he was "included in 1948 into a research group working on the thermonuclear weapons" - more than a year before the US decision to build an H-bomb. His group had been part of a whole "special institute" apparently working full-time on the H-bomb in 1950 two years before the US test showed thermonuclear weapons to be feasible.65 As for the ICBMs, the Soviets had begun their development much earlier than the United States.66 Why the difference between the bold pattern of decision-making on strategic technologies and frequently imitational approach to conventional weapons? In the latter case, originality is discouraged both because of risk-averse R&D leaders, and because of a tendency to respond to requests from the military based on information about foreign developments, rather than to initiate new programs. 67 Attracting the attention of the top political leadership to unexplored venues in helicopter or anti-aircraft missile development is probably difficult because such weapons pose no grave immediate threats to Soviet security. Political leaders are bound to pay more attention to weapons, however radically new, if the price for procrastination is high, while the payoff for early acquisition is great. Rewards for an R&D leader who pushes such a project will be extra-

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ordinary, as happened with Academician Igor Kurchatov, the leader of the Soviet nuclear weapons program, and Academician Sergei Korolev, the leader of the Soviet ICBM program). Thus, risk-taking might be justified.68 A more contemporary example might be the Soviet work on "exotic" (laser) BMD weapons. Already in 1971 a Soviet military writer claimed that their scientists took the lead in convincing the military that lasers could be used as weapons. 69 Exotic BMD technologies had been explored in the US but had not been a focus of R&D until at least 1972, and even as late as 1980 were considered to be hardly feasible.70 In 1972 the Soviets viewed their work on BMD "beam" weapons seriously enough to insert a special clause (against the wishes of the Americans) into the ABM Treaty permitting the future testing of such a weapon. 71 According to Soviet documents Moscow had been illegally acquiring Western technology necessary for building BMD lasers in 1979, four years before Ronald Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative.72 The dynamics of innovation might also be driven by certain internal ideological and cultural factors. Applied to military affairs, the Marxist dialectic means, among other things, that every new weapon will sooner or later be inevitably "negated" by a new counterweapon. On the basis of this logic, Marshal Ogarkov insisted that nuclear weapons were not absolute and that at some point an effective defense against them will be found.73 Indeed, an eyewitness account suggests that the Soviets decided to begin R&D of ballistic missile defense already in 1953 - before there was an inkling of a serious ICBM threat from the United States, let alone of BMD development there. 74 Since the Soviets were developing ballistic missiles at the same time themselves, one is tempted to conclude that it was their own work on offensive missile systems, perceived through the deterministic prism of dialectical materialist thinking, that stimulated their work on defensive missile systems: if laws of nature made strategic ballistic missiles possible, then Americans were likely sooner or later to acquire them. Since the threat would be so grave, the risk inherent in such a novel project as BMD would be justified. The Soviets do find inspiration in Western weapons, a tendency probably strengthened by the "era of stagnation." Nevertheless, the Soviets were historically not doomed to a lag in actual deployment, and unilateral Western restraint was no guarantee against Soviet R&D and production. Not only were the Soviets psychologically ready to innovate whenever the geopolitical stakes were high, but Soviet military R&D was triggered merely by information about R&D of a new weapon in the West. Today no new development in military technology, however revolutionary, can stay secret long enough to mature into sudden deployment of a

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"new-in-principle" weapon before the other side could begin to respond. The Soviet military know that they have substantial strategic warning about Western technological surprises: a recent study by the Soviet navy emphasizes that forecasting on the basis of patent information indicates that the time lag between a new scientific discovery and its weaponization is about thirteen years, minimizing the possibility of a complete surprise. 75 By the same token, a complete technological surprise from the Soviets is unlikely as long as they continue to seek inspiration in developments already underway in the West. Risk-taking and bold innovativeness require a stable political environment and a clear strategic vision shared by the policymakers. Both these conditions appear to be largely lacking in today's Soviet Union. Given the military, economic, and political uncertainties in the USSR, military R&D leaders might be inclined to wait for Western developments to mature at least to development stage before reacting to them, which will further reduce the Soviet potential for innovation. Without more innovativeness in the Soviet military R&D system, it will be difficult to implement the policy of "asymmetric response." The Soviet military have so far kept their habit of "symmetric response." The case of lighter-than-air vehicles is an example. It appears that by the 1980s Soviet aerospace R&D decided to conduct no work on lighterthan-air vehicles because of high cost and uncertain technical promise. But by 1988 the military daily Krasnaya zvezda announced that the resistance of the aerospace industry to lighter-than-air vehicles had been broken (presumably, by the military) and that work on blimps had commenced. Unsurprisingly, at the same time work on military blimps resumed in the United States. 76 The impact of Gorbachev's reforms Economic reform and military R&D During Gorbachev's first three years, his economic policy of acceleration sent generally favorable signals to military R&D. Judging by the military press at the time, Gorbachev planned to eliminate a disparity in the quality of civilian and military technologies (probably to the military's detriment), but also planned to create a broader and stronger technological base which would have had long term benefits for the military R&D. According to a professor of the Voroshilov Academy of the General Staff, [regarding the strengthening of military-economic potential, today it is difficult to overestimate the Party's concern for sharp acceleration of the scientific and technological progress. Indeed, the main directions of the scientific and technological progress - further top-priority development of machine-building, especially

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machine tool-building, robotics, computers, instrument-building, electronics serve today also as the main catalysts to the military-technological progress.77 Indeed, Gorbachev's economic policy emphasized exceptionally high investment rates in the machine-building sector, which was supposed to reach 30 percent of the 1985-1990 Five-Year Plan overall industrial investment - higher percentages had been reached by the Soviets only on the eve and during World War II. 78 Irrespective of whether increased investment in machine-building goes to the defense or civilian sectors,79 the military must have perceived the impact of such an economic program as salutary because of the dual-use character of modern technologies. Why did Gorbachev undertake such ambitious investment given the sorry state of the Soviet consumer? He and his advisors may have anticipated substantial and quick trickle-down from the accelerated development of machine-building into consumer industries and in improved living standards. 80 Some reform-minded economists warned against this policy: Nikolai Shmelev, for instance, wrote in his ground-breaking article "Advances and Debts" that the Soviet Union needed to learn how to manage its already available industrial resources rather than push the development of high technology.81 Since the Soviet consumer needs first of all simple items which could very well be produced with the technologies of the 1950s, the thrust of Shmelev's argument seems to have been directed primarily against the military, who would lose their "strategic parity" without accelerated development of high technology. By 1988 it became clear that the miraculous "trickle-down" was not happening and that living standards were declining.82 This is dangerous for Gorbachev, and the two last annual plans in the 1985-90 Five Year Plan were substantially revised: consumption was given higher priority, while some of the government's industrial investment has been reduced although the machine-building sector has remained a priority. 83 Two months after the change, Gorbachev stated that military spending would be reduced by 14.2 and weapons procurement by 19.5 percent during 1988 and 1990. According to a DIA-CIA analysis, such cuts would reduce military R&D outlays. 84 One unambiguously negative consequence for military R&D is that skilled manpower is lured away from the defense industry by newly organized cooperatives offering much higher pay. 85 The extent of any structural changes in the military R&D system remains in doubt. The organization of the Soviet defense industry is the antithesis of a market economy. A veteran of the Soviet defense industry states: It is based on the principle of a "pyramid." Its top is a certain military product, while its foundation comprises industrial enterprises providing raw materials and

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parts. For every type of a military product a special "pyramid" has been created. All of them were practically autonomous from the other sectors of the economy . . . Rigid technological links within a "pyramid" have permitted a surge production of weapons when necessary.86 Defense R&D and production of each type of hardware is therefore practically monopolized.87 This monopoly, however, is relative: it frequently permits existence of several R&D organizations designing weapons and weapons systems for similar missions. Some Soviet analysts are citing the case of offensive strategic systems: SS-24 and SS-25 ICBMs, the Typhoon and Delta 4 SSBNs, the SS-N-20 and SS-N-23 SLBMs. 88 This parallelism is at least partially due to successful lobbying by entrenched groups in military R&D community, but it might also be rooted in institutionalized pessimism about quality of new weapons, especially their reliability. General Shabanov, the Deputy Minister of Defense for Armaments, maintains that poor reliability of new weapons made the Soviets produce them in very high numbers in the 1960s and 1970s.89 Perhaps allowing parallelism has been another safeguard against failure. Some civilians and military officers have been proposing a reduction of the number of weapons systems built, so as to use the released resources for improving the quality of equipment, perhaps by organizing competitions between various R&D and production facilities in order to eliminate the monopoly among suppliers. 90 How can competitiveness be introduced into this rigid system? By January 1, 1989, the whole defense industry began to work along Gorbachev's economic lines of greater decision-making autonomy and self-financing of an individual enterprise. Under the new economic mechanism the customer (the Ministry of Defense) receives a certain budget allocation and is supposed to give contracts to individual enterprises on a competitive basis in order to obtain the best quality at the lowest prices. One proposed method of "demonopolization" is establishing defense industry cooperatives, as supposedly has been done to carry out R&D and design of small (sports) aircraft. When it turned out that large design bureaus were not interested, special cooperative teams attached to existing aircraft design bureaus filled in this technological "niche." 91 Many enterprises in the defense industry operate at a loss because prices are set artifically low by a monopolistic customer - the Ministry of Defense.92 Self-financing is impossible without disrupting R&D and production of some weapons. According to a statement from the prestigious Central Aero-Hydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI) of the Ministry of Aviation Industry, it views introduction of self-financing and decisionmaking autonomy with considerable concern. 93 Some defense enterprises will work under an experimental economic mechanism: about 70 percent of

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ownership is supposed to go to the workers' collectives, with the rest controlled by a branch ministry which has an option to change its share of ownership through investment. Such enterprises "are not administratively subordinated to anybody." They are to be run by the Councils of Workers' Collective, whose membership includes a representative of the branch ministry with a number of votes in proportion to the state's share of ownership" in the enterprise. 94 The impact of such experiments on military R&D will probably be the same as on the economy as a whole: inflation. Faced with the need for financial survival and new opportunities, R&D units, both those attached to individual enterprises and independent ones, according to General Shabanov, are already raising prices for their wyork, frequently from 150 to 300 per cent. The military, who are under pressure to reduce their budget, are calling for an action by the Council of Ministers to roll back the R&D costs charged by "selfish" "scientific organizations."95 If the Council of Ministers does as the Ministry of Defense is requesting, the military R&D and industry will not become self-financing. If such pressure is not applied by the Council of Ministers, and if the military cannot meet the rising costs, the R&D institutions might begin to seek new and more generous customers, an unwelcome development for the short to mid-term future of the Soviet defense capabilities. So far, there are no customers like this at home, but some military R&D institutions are looking for joint ventures with Western companies; indeed, the Sukhoi design bureau is already working with Gulf Aerospace in a project of a supersonic executive jet.96 As for cooperative design bureaus, their propensity for raising prices, their advantages in pay and in attracting skilled R&D personnel, as well as the competition between cooperatives and "regular" design bureaus for scarce equipment, and their freedom to engage in whatever R&D venture brings more profit (rather in whatever the Ministry of Defense happens to desire) will make cooperatives quite unpopular with the defense industry, the Military-Industrial Commission, and the military. Pressure to prevent their proliferation will be certain and strong. It is only in the longer term that R&D cooperatives, if allowed to exist and grow, will contribute to the overall military R&D capability by being more flexible and less costly over a long period of time than "regular" design bureaus. (A cooperative can be created for fulfilling a specific contract with an express understanding that afterwards the military do not have to support it, while design bureaus have proved to be bureaucratically immortal.) There is no indication of structural changes capable of transforming the generally evolutionary, quantity-rather-than-quality style of military R&D

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work. The probable outcome of Gorbachev's economic reforms for the military R&D system will be an attempt to retain the status quo ante. The defense sector will continue to be largely financed in the traditional way by state contracts (goszakaz).97 State contracts guarantee all necessary supplies (a traditional bottleneck in Soviet military R&D) in exchange for essentially non-market behavior of enterprises which are supposed to produce whatever is required irrespective of profitability. If economic reform proceeds, the defense industry and R&D would be pitted increasingly against the evolving economic system. The civilian economy would lure R&D specialists away with better pay; the defense industry, together with the military, would be likely to exert their influence on the political leadership in order to increase their budgets to offset inflation and to restrain the market forces disruptive to the operation of the Soviet defense industry and R&D system. Perhaps the half-baked economic reform will combine the worst features of the new system (inflation) with those of the old (lack of cost effectiveness), as suggested by a senior aerospace scientist and Chairman of the Public Commission to Facilitate Conversion Academician V. Avduevskiy, who has stated that the defense industry is continuing to operate along the lines of command economy.98 Impact of budget cuts and conversion Moscow's official position has been so far to ignore this potential for problems and to concentrate instead on the supposed benefits of defense budget cuts and konversiya - conversions of defense R&D and industry to consumer needs. Despite the welcome glasnost in military affairs, it is difficult to assess the combined impact of conversion and budget cuts on military R&D. The conversion means an increase of consumer goods production in the defense industries from the current 40 to 60 percent by 1995." In some cases, when a new product is involved, special R&D effort will be required; this will not be needed for increased output of an existing product. According to the Soviets military R&D was 19.8 per cent of Soviet military budget in 1989 and will be 18.6 per cent in 1990. The R&D share of the defense budget has taken a 14.0 per cent nose dive in FY 1990 when the defense budget was slashed from the average 8.2 percent. This development appears to contradict the proclaimed emphasis on drastically enhanced "quality" of military technology. The actual impact of such cuts might be even greater than the numbers indicate because of inflation in military R&D referred to above. This sharp reduction might reflect some hard political realities: the need to raise or at least protect the standard of

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living of officers (who indeed got a raise recently), the need to pay more pensions as more officers are asked to retire, and the imperative of buying weapons already in the production pipeline. It is possible, of course, that the Soviet defense budget figures are not to be trusted: for instance, Academician Avduevskiy, who has been involved with military R&D, finds the published defense budget to be unrealistically low as a result of "creative accounting." 100 Then the shortfall might be explained by a diversion of some military R&D projects into civilian budget items. Still, published Soviet sources indicate that military R&D is likely to suffer as a result of conversion and budget cuts. According to General Shabanov, some R&D projects have been canceled and others delayed.101 A number of projects have been effectively put on a backburner by transferring them from experimental design back to scientific experimental stage. 102 The conversion itself incurs additional costs (equipping new production lines, designing new products), which puts additional pressure on the defense industrial enterprises budget. In these conditions R&D frequently has to be financed at the expense of funds for social needs and merit bonuses, which causes tensions among workers and management. 103 Former Chairman of the Supreme Soviet Commission on Defense and State Security Vladimir Lapygin warned against putting military R&D facilities on a "starvation diet," and proposed that conversion be financed by cutting production and parallelism.104 As suggested earlier, however, parallelism cannot be fully eliminated unless quality of R&D work and reliability of resulting weapons systems are significantly improved - a condition difficult to achieve without a thorough change not only in the military R&D system but in the Soviet economy as a whole. Conclusions The social and economic malaise endemic to contemporary Soviet society has affected the military R&D community. It suffers from personnel "stagnation," eroding testing facilities, poor reliability of the final product, incompetence of leaders, etc. The capacity for innovation, already limited by a relatively weak technological base, bureaucratic risk avoidance behavior, reluctance to promote native innovation, is being reduced further by the general political, military, and economic crisis. Gorbachev's economic reforms have resulted in strong inflationary pressures which are souring the relationship between the military R&D community and the military. The conversion of the defense industry to civilian needs forces military R&D specialists to work on relatively "low tech" consumer goods, which they see as not prestigious. This loss of prestige is probably

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contributing to the brain drain of military R&D specialists leaving for much better paying ventures in the gray semi-free market zone of the economy. A basic change in the military R&D system is unlikely without a profound change in the system of political decision-making affecting military R&D. All the established decision-making bodies are still very much in place. The one new institutional player, the Supreme Soviet, has selected a group of ultimate insiders of the Soviet defense industry and military establishment to deal with the issues pertinent to military R&D in the Committee of Defense and State Security. They are reputed to be more in the business of advocacy for the defense industry and R&D (where all of them are still employed) than in the business of reform. No basic structural change of the military R&D system has been undertaken. The use of cooperative R&D organizations appears to have a limited future. Monopoly of both the customer and supplier makes true competition in military R&D difficult, and thus makes significant cost saving unlikely. Considerable dependence on foreign ideas and concepts will still characterize military R&D. In the past, intervention by the top political leaders combined with very high rewards for military R&D leaders made weapons breakthroughs possible. This requires a certain coherence of the political leadership's strategic views, a condition which is currently absent. Given some minimally favorable economic conditions, the Soviets are likely to maintain an adequate arsenal which is somewhat behind the latest Western achievements. The problem is, of course, that such an approach implies compensation for lower quality with larger quantity - and that will be at odds with Gorbachev's doctrine of "quality rather than quantity." The Soviet military R&D will suffer from the decline of Soviet basic science. Gorbachev's reforms have done little to reverse the deterioration of Soviet science, and his attempts to make basic science pay for itself have further worsened its financial situation. A sharp divisiveness has appeared in the relations between the military and the scientists, and between military R&D and the scientific communities. This divisiveness is prompted by the belief among many scientists that the military R&D system consumes resources which should go to basic science, and that the military R&D leaders are acquiring too much influence over basic science. Many scientists are politically radical and are thus unlikely to be too cooperative with the "military-industrial complex." In addition, some scientists tend to blame the military R&D community for the decline of the quality of Soviet science because much incompetent scientific work has been allegedly shielded by secrecy.105 On the positive side, glasnosf has allowed criticism of existing short-

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comings. Combined with budget cuts, these criticisms may one day bring a leaner and more flexible military R&D system. At this point such a prospect is of a theoretical value only. Since the Soviet Union is seized by a systemic crisis unparalleled in its severity in modern history, since the Soviet economy is continuing its nosedive, all our projections and clever observations might become outdated very soon. But whatever socioeconomic system is born out of today's crisis, it will use for the foundation some elements of today's system, including certain structures needed to research, develop and design new weapons. Whatever the immediate future of the Soviet military R&D system, its heritage, with all the strengths and weaknesses, will leave an imprint on Russia's future.

Notes 1 S. A. Tyushkevich, Voyna i sovremennost (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), p. 131; "Slagaemye kosmicheskogo podviga," Pravda, January 13, 1987; "Sakharov Discusses Destiny, Pace of Restructuring," Molodezh' Estonii, October 11, 1988, translated in Foreign Broadcast Information Service-Soviet Union (further-FBIS), November 4, 1989, pp. 36, 37. 2 Several Western scholars have done much to explain the workings of Soviet military R&D system. See, for instance, David Hollo way, "Soviet Military R&D: Managing the 'Research-Production Cycle'," in Soviet Science and Technology. Domestic and Foreign Perspectives, ed. John R. Thomas and Ursula M. Kruse-Vaucienne (Washington, DC: published for the National Science Foundation by the George Washington University Press, 1976), pp. 189-229; David Holloway, "The Soviet Style of Military R&D," in The Genesis of New Weapons. Decision Making for Military R&D, ed. Franklin A. Long and Judith Reppy (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980), pp. 137-160; David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, 2nd edn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 131-155; David Holloway, "Doctrine and Technology in Soviet Armaments Policy," in Soviet Military Thinking, ed. Derek Leebaert (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), pp. 259-291; David Holloway, "Military Technology," in The Technological Level of Soviet Industry, ed. Ronald Amman, Julian Cooper, R. W. Davies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); David Holloway, "Innovation in the Defense Sector," in Industrial Innovation in the Soviet Union, ed. Ronald Amman and Julian Cooper (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); Arthur J. Alexander, R&D in Soviet Aviation (Santa Monica: Rand, 1970); Arthur J. Alexander, Armor Development in the Soviet Union and the United States (Santa Monica: Rand, 1976); Arthur J. Alexander, "Decision-Making in Soviet Weapons Procurement," Adelphi Papers, nos. 147-148 (London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 1978-1979); John R. Thomas, "Militarization of the Soviet Academy of Sciences," Survey, vol. 29, no. 1 (124) (Spring 1985), 29-58. 3 Holloway, "Soviet Military R&D: Managing the 'Research-Production Cycle5," p. 214. 4 "Rech' M. Gorbacheva pered ofitserami," reproduced in USSR Today. Soviet

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7 8 9 10

11

12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20

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Media News and Features Digest, August 17, 1990; Radio Liberty Daily Report, February 13,1991; "Oboruna strany: strategiya perestroyki," Pravda, October 31, 1990. Alexander Rahr, "Gorbachev Changes Party Structure," Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, no. 519 (November 30, 1988), 1. John Tedstrom, "Soviet Defense Industries Under Pressure," Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, no. 522 (November 22,1988), 1; Mikhail Sokolov, "Versiya s grifom 'konversiya'," Sobesednik, no. 7 (1990). Herwig Kraus and Alexander Rahr, "The Composition of the Soviet Government," Radio Liberty Research Supplement, no. 5 (1988, 3. "Tankovye voyska: istoriya i perspektivy," Krasnaya zvezda, September 11, 1988. Petro Grigorenko, V podpol'e mozhno vstretit tol'ko krys (Long Island, NY: Detinets, 1981), p. 442. Meyer, "Sources and Prospects," pp. 130, 131, and fn at same pages; Col. General A. Makashov, "My ne sobirayemsya sdavat' sya," Krasnaya zvezda, June 21, 1990. "Komitety Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR i postoyannye komissii Soveta Soyuza i Soveta Natsional'nostey," Izvestiya, July 13, 1989; "Konversiya voennoy promyshlennosti v SSSR: kakoy put' predpochtitel'nee?" Voennyy Vestnik APN, no. 21 (1989); Michael Dobbs, "Soviet Army Starts First Labor Union over Strong Objections," Washington Post Service in The Monterey Herald, October 22, 1989; "Kommyunike zasedaniya Baltiyskogo Soveta," Atmoda, October 23, 1989; L. Sher, "Sil'na differentsiatsiya, slaba integratsiya," Sovetskaya Estoniya, June 7, 1989. "Vtoroy s'ezd narodnykh deputatov SSSR. Stenograficheskiy otchet,"Izvestiya, December 19, 1989. A. Podvez'ko, "V sekretnom komitete," Sovetskaya Estoniya, January 28,1990; Vladimir Lopatin, "Armiya i politika," Znamya, July 1990, p. 157; Radio Liberty Daily Report, June 21, 1990. On Brezhnev's policy-making style, see Fedor Burlatskiy, "Brezhnev i krushenie ottepeli," Literaturnaya gazeta, September 14, 1988. B. Chertok, "Ryvok k zvezdam," Izvestiya, October 1, 1987. Marshal of the Soviet Union (MSU) V. Sokolovskiy, ed., Voennaya Strategiya, 3rd edn (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1968), pp. 243-256; MSU N. Ogarkov, Istoriya uchit bditel'nosti (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1985), pp. 48, 49. Holloway, "Doctrine and Technology," pp. 285-287. Donald MacKenzie, "The Soviet Union and Strategic Missile Guidance," International Security, vol. 13, no. 2 (Fall 1988), 44, 45. Harriet Fast Scott and William F. Scott, The Armed Forces of the USSR (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981), p. 47. One of the most prominent examples is a recent book prepared by a team of naval officers and dealing extensively with the future of naval armaments: N. P. Vyunenko et al., Voenno-morskoyflot:roV, perspektivy razvitiya, ispoVzovanie (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1988), pp. 64-183. Notra Trulock III, Kerry L. Hines, Anne D. Herr, Soviet Military Thought in Transition: Implications for the Long-Term Military Competition (Arlington, VA: Pacific-Sierra Research Corp., May 1988), PSR Report No. 1831, p. 31.

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22 Col. S. A. Bartenev, Ekonomicheskoe protivoborstvo v voyne (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1986), p. 122; "Nauchno-prakticheskaya konferenstiya MID SSR," Vestnik Ministerstva inostrannykh delSSSR, no. 15 (1988), 35, 36. 23 "O khode realizatsii resheniy xxvn s'ezda KPSS i zadachakh po uglubleniiyu perestroyki," Kommunist, no. 10 (1988), 67. A similar view had already been presented by some in the Soviet military; see, for instance, Bartenev, Ekonomicheskoe protivoborstvo v voyne, p. 86. On meaning of "quality" for military hardware, see Army General D. T. Yazov, "The Qualitative Parameters of Defense Building," Krasnaya zvezda, August 9, 1988, in FBIS-Soviet Union, August 10, 1988, p. 67. 24 For the manpower problems of the Soviet military, see Mikhail Tsypkin, The "New Thinking" and Quality of Soviet Military Manpower. (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1989), passim. For plans to reduce the volume of weapons production, see a statement by then Chief of General Staff MSU Sergei Akhromeev in I. Sas, "Perestroyka trebuet del," Krasnaya zvezda, August 13,1988. 25 A. Lizichev, "Armiya - razgovor o nasushchnom," Kommunist, no. 3 (1989), 17, 18. 26 Stephen M. Meyer, "The Sources and Prospects of Gorbachev's New Political Thinking on Security," International Security, vol. 13, no. 2 (Fall 1988), 126, fn. 27 'xxvn syezd KPSS ob ukreplenii oboronosposobnosti strany i povyshenii boevoy gotovnsoti Vooruzhennykh Sil," Voenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal, no. 4 (1986), 8. 28 Meyer, "The Sources and Prospects," pp. 145, 146. 29 Ibid., p. 150. 30 Vitaliy Zhurkin, Sergey Karaganov and Andrey Kortunov, "Reasonable Sufficiency - Or How To Break the Vicious Circle," New Times, no. 40 (October 12, 1987), in FBIS-Soviet Union, October 14, 1987, p. 4. 31 Army General M. Moiseev, "Sovetskaya voennaya doktrina: realizatsiya ee oboronitel'noy napravlennosti," Pravda, March 13, 1989. 32 For a debate on SS-20s, see, for instance, "Posle dogovora po RSMD," SShA: ekonomika, politika ideologiya, no. 12 (1988), 23-41; on tanks, see V. Shlykov, "'Strong Is the Armour,' Tank Asymmetry and Real Security," International Affairs (1988), 37-48; for a criticism of SS-20s as damaging to the Soviet national security, see E. Shashkov, "Skol'ko stoit bezopasnost'?" Kommunist, no. 4(1989), 113. 33 Army Gen. D. T. Yazov, "Armiya druzhby i bratstva narodov," Krasnaya zvezda, September 22, 1989. 34 Moiseev, "Sovetskaya voennaya doktrina." 35 V. N. Chernavin,'' Kommentariy Glavnokomanduyushchego Voenno-Morskim Flotom strany admirala flota V. N. Chernavina," Pravda, October 19, 1989. 36 V. Izgarshev et al., "Oni ostavlyayut avtografy v nebe," Pravda, August 18, 1989. 37 Berkowitz, "Reviving Defense R&D," p. 54. 38 Georgiy Ozerov, Tupolevskaya sharaga (Frankfurt-am-Main: Possev Verlag, 1971) p. 57, as translated in Rebecca V. Strode, "Soviet Design Policy and Its Implications for US Combat Aircraft Procurement," U.S. Air University Review, vol. 31, no. 2 (1984), 54.

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39 A professor of the Voroshilov General Staff Academy noted that in parallel with weapons based on scientific and technological breakthroughs, the Soviets must produce weapons with "long life cycle and good perspective for modernization." See Maj. General M. Yasyukov, "Voennaya politika KPSS: sushchnost', soderzhanie," Kommunist Vooruzhennykh Sil, no. 20 (1985), 19. 40 "Doklad E. A. Sheverdnadze," Vestnik Ministerstva inostrannykh del SSSR, no. 15 (1989), 36. 41 Konstantin Feoktistov and Igor Bubnov, O kosmoletakh (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1982), p. 46. The Soviets began to work on military applications of rockets simultaneously with the Germans in the late 1920s-early 1930s. While the German rocket project resulted in a mass production and employment of radically new weapons - large ballistic and cruise missiles, its Soviet counterpart largely fizzled out, with the only brilliant exception of the Katyusha powder rockets, which, it should be noted, were inexpensive and simple to manufacture. For details, see Mikhail Tsypkin, "The Origins of the Soviet Military Research and Development System, 1917-19413" PhD dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1985, pp. 183-264. 42 Army General D. T. Yazov, "Povyshat' otdachu voennoy nauki," Krasnaya zvezda, August 14, 1988; Army General D. T. Yazov, "The Qualitative Parameters of Defense Building," Krasnaya zvezda, August 9, 1988, translated in FBISSoviet Union, August 10, 1988, p. 67. 43 Norbert D. Michaud, "Current Developments in Soviet Military Spending", paper prepared for the Hoover Institution-Rand Conference on Defense Sector and the Soviet Economy at Palo Alto, CA, March 23-24, 1988, pp. 8, 9; Vladimir Kontorovich, "The Long-Run Decline in R&D Productivity in the USSR," paper presented at the Hoover-Rand Conference on the Defense Sector in Soviet Economy, March 24, 1988, Stanford, CA, pp. 18-23. 44 Kontorovich, "The Long-Run Decline in R&D", pp. 19-21. 45 Yazov, "Povyshat' otdachu voennoy nauki." 46 "Akademik Valentin Petrovich Glushko," Pravda, January 13, 1989. 47 B. Chertok, "Ryvok k zvezdam," Izvestiya, October 1, 1987; V. Avduevskiy, "Nash put' ne byl ustlan rozami," Literaturnaya gazeta, September 30, 1987. 48 "A Man Who Can Say N o " (an interview with Academician Roald Sagdeev), New Times, no. 47 (1988), 27. 49 A. Isaev, "Reforma i oboronnye otrasli," Kommunist, no. 5 (1989), 24, 25. 50 Philip Hanson, "New Light on Soviet Industrial Espionage," Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, January 20, 1986; Soviet Acquisition of Militarily Significant Western Technology: An Update (September 1985), p. 8 51 "Kursom nauchno-tekhnicheskogo progressa," Izvestiya, December 18, 1985; V. Medvedev, "Velikiy Oktyabr' i sovremennyy mir," Kommunist, no. 2 (January 1988), 14; A. Yakovlev, "Rabotat' po sovesti, zhit' chestno," Pravda, February 28, 1989; "Press-konferentsiya E. A. Sheverdnadze," Pravda, September 25, 1988. 52 Col. V. Slipchenko, "Strategicheskoe ravnovesie," Krasnaya zvezda, June 24, 1988; Vyunenko etal., Voenno-morskoyflot, p. 58. 53 See, for instance, Alexander Steinhaus, The Beginnings of Soviet Military Electronics, 1948-1961. A Personal Account (Falls Church, VA: Delphic Associates, Inc., 1986), p. 63.

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54 Steinhaus, Soviet Military Electronics, pp. 60, 61; Lev Chaiko, Helicopter Construction in the USSR (Falls Church, VA: Delphic Associates, Inc., 1985), pp. 73, 74; Victor Yevsikov, Re-Entry Technology and the Soviet Space Program (Some Personal Observations) (Falls Church, VA: Delphic Associates, Inc., 1982), p. 7. 55 A thesis according to which Western advances in military technology have been primarily responsible for the Soviet conduct in the arms race has been developed by Matthew Evangelista in Innovation and the Arms Race. How the United States and the Soviet Union Develop New Military Technologies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), passim. 56 Steinhaus, Soviet Military Electronics, pp. 103-113; Anatol Fedoseev, Design in Soviet Military R&D: The Case of Radar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Russian Research Center, n.d.), p. 2. 57 Steinhaus, Soviet Military Electronics, p. 107. 58 Chaiko, Helicopter Construction in the USSR, pp. 71, 72. 59 Yazov, "Povyshat' otdachu voennoy nauki." 60 Anatoliy Aleksandrov, "Kak delali bombu," Izvestiya, July 23,1988. Kapitsa's non-participation has been common knowledge for quite some time, but it has been usually attributed to his moral scruples. 61 M. Rebrov, "Sem' likov sud'by," Krasnaya zvezda, January 7, 1989. 62 Fedoseev, Design in Soviet Military R&D: The Case of Radar, pp. 6, 15. 63 Chaiko, Helicopter Construction in the USSR, p. 71; Steinhaus, Soviet Military Electronics, p. 114. 64 Aleksandrov, "Kak delali bombu." 65 David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, pp. 24-26; Andrei Sakharov, O strane i mire (New York: Khronika, 1976), pp. V, VI. Also see Vanda Beletskaya, "Vzyvayushchiy," Ogonyok, no. 8 (1989), 7. 66 Simon Ramo, The Business of Science. Winning and Losing in the High-Tech Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1988), pp. 78-80. 67 Chaiko, Helicopter Construction in the USSR, pp. 68-71; Steinhaus, Soviet Military Electronics, p. 122. 68 Dr. Anatoly Fedoseev has offered a somewhat different opinion based on his own experience, namely that original designs were generally encouraged. (See Fedoseev, Design in Soviet Military R&D: The Case of Radar, pp. 5, 6.) But Fedoseev's field of work - magnetron for radars - was at the center of strategic competition because of its importance for strategic warning and ballistic missile defense, and he was an established authority and pioneer in this field with a remarkable record of achievement, which brought him the highest award of the Hero of Socialist Labor; he is also a person with remarkable ability to take risks for the sake of his beliefs. 69 Holloway, "Innovation in the Defense Sector," p. 296. 70 David N. Schwartz, "Past and Present," in Ballistic Missile Defense, ed. Ashton B. Carter and David N. Schwartz (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1984), p. 348. 71 Shashkov, "Skol'ko stoit bezopasnost'?" Kommunist, no. 4 (1989), 115. 72 David Buchan, "Beam of Light on Soviet Star Wars Research," The Financial Times, October 16, 1986. 73 Cited by David B. Rivkin, Jr., in "What Does Moscow Think?" Foreign Policy,

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75 76

77

78

79

80 81 82 83

84 85 86 87 88 89 90

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Summer 1985, p. 100; on application of dialectical materialism to weapons development, see Ogarkov, Istoriya uchit bditel'nosti, pp. 48-54. Uri Ra'anan and Richard H. Shultz, Jr., "Oral History: A Neglected Dimension of Sovietology," Strategic Review, Spring 1987, pp. 65, 66; for the most thorough treatment of the impact of Marxist philosophy on Soviet science, see Loren R. Graham, Science, Philosophy and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). Vyunenko et al., Voenno-morskoyflot,p. 58. I. V. Lyustiberg, "Dirizhabli: start v 1992 godu," Krasnaya zvezda, October 16, 1988; Malcolm Browne, "US Turns To Giant Blimp For Defense Of Nation's Shores," The New York Times, January 10,1989; just as the Americans propose to use blimps for ASW, so do the Soviets: see Vyunenko et al., Voenno-morskoyflot,pp. 82, 83. Maj. Gen. M. Yasyukov, "Voennaya politika KPSS: Sushchnost', soderzhanie," Kommunist Vooruzhennykh Sil, no. 20 (1985), 20; similar views have been expressed by the Deputy Minister of Defense for Armaments Army General V. Shabanov in "Adequate Armaments Are Vital," Soviet Military Review, no. 3 (1987), excerpted in The Strategic Review, Spring 1987, pp. 79, 80. Boris Rumer, "The Problems of Industrial Modernization in the USSR," in The Soviet Economy: A New Course?, ed. Reiner Weichhardt (Brussels: NATO, 1987), p. 241; Richard F. Kaufman, "Economic Reform and the Soviet Military," The Washington Quarterly, Summer 1988, p. 202. For opposing views on the subject, see Rumer, "The Problems of Industrial Modernization in the USSR," p. 242, and Kaufman, "Economic Reform and the Soviet Military," p. 205. Ye. Gaydar, "Kursom ozdorovleniya," Kommunist, no. 2 (1988), 47. Nikolai Shmelev, "Avansy i dolgi," Novyy mir, no. 6 (1987), reprinted in Novoe russkoe slovo, August 25-29, 1987. Gaydar, "Kursom ozdorovleniya," pp. 45-47. John Tedstrom, "The 1989 State Plan: A Sharp Break With the Past?" Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, no. 493 (November 3,1988), 2; The Soviet Economy in 1988: Gorbachev Changes Course. A Report By The Central Intelligence Agency And The Defense Intelligence Agency Presented to the Subcommittee on National Security Economics Of The Joint Economic Committee, April 14, 1989, p. 25. The Soviet Economy in 1988: Gorbachev Changes Course, pp. 16, 18. Isaev, "Reforma i oboronnye otrasli," p. 25. Shashkov, "Skol'ko stoit bezopasnost'?" p. 116. Isaev, "Reforma i oboronnye otrasli," p. 25. A. Arbatov, "How Much Defence Is Sufficient?" International Affairs, April 1989, p. 37. Army Gen. V. Shabanov, "Novye podkhody," Krasnaya zvezda, August 18, 1989. Captain 3rd Rank P. Ishchenko, "Korabli i rubli," Krasnaya zvezda, May 12, 1989; Fleet Admiral I. Kapitanets, "Kak razvivat'sya flotu?" Krasnaya zvezda, August 15, 1989. Isaev, "Reforma i oboronnye otrasli," p. 25. Ibid., pp. 26,27.

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93 XIX Vsesoyuznaya konferentsiya Kommunisticheksoy partii Sovetskogo Soyuza, 28 iyunya-1 iyulya 1988. Stenograficheskiy otchet, Vol. I (Moscow: Politizidat, 1988), p. 333. 94 Isaev, "Reforma i oboronnye otrasli," p. 30. For commentary on Isaev's article, see Philip Hanson, "Economic Reform and the Defense Sector," Report on the USSR, vol. 1, no. 17 (April 28, 1989). 95 Army General V. Shabanov, "Gar an tiro vat' mirnyy trud," Krasnaya zvezda, November 1, 1989. 96 B. Chebakov, "Start v xxi vek," Pravda, September 16, 1989. 97 Pavel Bunich, "Goszakaz ili prikaz," Ogonyok, no. 44 (1988), 14. 98 B. Konovalov, "Porazhenie militarizovannoy ekonomiki," Izvestiya, February 7, 1990. 99 D. Yazov, "Novaya model' bezopasnosti i Vooruzhennye sily," Kommunist, no. 18(1989), 67. 100 Konovalov, "Porazhenie militarizovannoy ekonomiki." 101 Shabanov, "Garantirovaf mirnyy trud." 102 Deputy Chief of the Financial Administration of the Ministry of Defense V. N. Bab'ev in "Raskhody SSSR na oboronu," Krasnaya zvezda, February 1, 1990, cited by John Tedstrom, Radio Liberty Research on SOVSET, March 5, 1990. 103 V. Martynenko, I. Ivanyuk, "Oborona. Konversiya. Khozraschet," Krasnaya zvezda, June 29, 1989. 104 Taranov, "Glasnost' i gosudarstvennaia bezopasnost'." 105 For greater detail, see Mikhail Tsypkin, "Turmoil in Soviet Science," Report On The USSR, vol. 1, no. 29 (July 21, 1989), 14-17.

A generation too late: civilian analysis and Soviet military thinking Benjamin S. Lambeth

As in most areas of Soviet domestic and foreign affairs, radical changes have been underway in Soviet defense policy since Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power in March of 1985. Barely months after Gorbachev entered office, the Soviet media began issuing proclamations with mounting insistence that the USSR was forging a more moderate military doctrine, seeking significant reductions in nuclear and conventional arms, and striving for an improved East-West relationship based on mutual accommodation. In short order, these signals coalesced into what has since come to be generally accepted by the West as a new military doctrine built on the twin pillars of "reasonable sufficiency" and "nonoffensive defense." Not surprisingly, the most provocative arguments for this new doctrine have not come from the uniformed ranks. Rather, they have emanated from a small but increasingly vocal body of civilian commentators on strategic and international affairs. Responding to the expanded room for maneuver opened up by glasnost, a host of aspiring players from outside the defense bureaucracy are striving to make inroads into the national security policy process. These contenders are well aware of the role played by their counterparts in the West and are eagerly seeking comparable involvement in the Soviet system. They are also making every effort to translate the growing attention and credibility that has been accorded to them by Western analysts into increased leverage and legitimacy within their own system. The result of these trends has been a significant erosion of the former monopoly commanded by the Defense Ministry and the General Staff in the formulation of Soviet military programs and policy. In the past, one could largely equate Soviet military policy with the parochial views of the High Command. This is no longer true. Today, the military viewpoint is but one aspect of what appears to be an emerging Soviet national security policy, a broader amalgam of considerations which shows the growing involvement of players out of uniform. "For the first time," observes David Isby, "the military's role in military affairs is being challenged by civilians." 1 217

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Coincident with these developments, some Western Sovietologists have concluded that the mounting "civilianization" of the Soviet defense debate has witnessed not merely an emergence of new voices offering alternative views, but a formalization of those views into full-fledged influence relationships. Jack Snyder, for one, argues that as Moscow's defense intellectuals have sought to "force changes that would institutionalize the policies they prefer," Gorbachev's security concepts have, in turn, "grown directly from the new domestic institutions he is promoting and the political constituencies he is relying on." 2 There is little question that these new civilian players nurture high policymaking ambitions. Yet the returns remain out on whether the leading members of the civilian defense intellectual community have progressed, at least thus far, from the status of contenders for influence to more established positions of access and authority. Indeed, it is unclear whether Gorbachev even intends to give them anything more than what, in the United States, would at best be considered consultant status. Much the same can be said for the new governmental contenders for influence over Soviet defense policy, whose leaders are still searching for a well-defined role. Gorbachev seems determined to shift the locus of power from the traditional national security bureaucracy toward a broader and more pluralistic setting. This process, however, remains very much in its formative stages, as many of the protagonists themselves are among the first to admit. For one thing, notwithstanding glasnost and Gorbachev's conviction that Soviet security is too important to be left to the generals, the Soviet political system remains a closed and compartmented domain. Military secrets are still jealously protected by the High Command, and free information flow even within the state bureaucracy - is anything but routine. Moreover, although Gorbachev has curtailed the military's dominance over national security decisionmaking, he has neither emasculated it nor fundamentally altered its pivotal role in Soviet force planning. In those crucial areas in which the High Command retains an uncontested edge in technical expertise, it will remain disinclined even consider, let alone tolerate, any encroachment by untutored civilian outsiders. For these reasons, any effort to project the outlook for civilian involvement in Soviet defense politics beyond the immediate future must be undertaken with a healthy measure of caution. Guided by this proviso, the following discussion will survey the major contributions of the emergent Soviet civilian defense institutions and analysts, assess their ambitions and influence, and consider the various factors that will affect their prospects for becoming a more established presence on the Soviet security scene.

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The evolving setting of the Soviet defense debate To understand the recent growth of civilian involvement in Soviet defense politics, we must first consider the altered context of Soviet military policymaking that has emerged under Gorbachev. Moscow's defense intellectuals have not acquired prominence solely on the merits of their views. Rather, they have been the beneficiaries of a broader process of institutional change, the ultimate outcome of which remains only dimly foreseeable. It is now common knowledge that Gorbachev has been seeking to wrest control of the defense agenda from its traditional repository in the Defense Ministry.3 This effort has unleashed a high-level struggle for dominance over Soviet national security policy, in which the High Command has found itself increasingly beset by a determined reach for greater access and authority by outside contenders. Spearheading this civilian pursuit of greater involvement in Soviet security matters has been the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Under the leadership of since-resigned Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, the MFA has steadily evolved from a silent backer of the Soviet military to become one of its most vocal institutional adversaries.4 Shevardnadze had laid claim to the inside track in Soviet security decisionmaking by openly insisting that his ministry "carries direct and immediate responsibility for assuring that everything at a high political level [concerning Gorbachev's announced troop cuts and arms control goals] is implemented, realized, and carried out."5 Another important development in the broadening civilian involvement in Soviet security planning was the establishment of a Committee on Defense and State Security (CDSS) during thefinalsession of the Supreme Soviet on June 10, 1989. This organization, one of some twenty-five such groups set up in the Soviet legislature, is expressly modeled after the US House Armed Services Committee. According to one press account, it "has been stretching itsfledglingmuscles in a manner that, if continued, could help reshape the political landscape of the Soviet Union."6 The formation of the committee was a direct outgrowth of earlier advocacy by Shevardnadze and others for an end to the military's monopoly on defense information and its replacement by a system of public accountability and legislative oversight. The emergence of the Defense and State Security Committee was presaged in Gorbachev's closing address to the Supreme Soviet. In it, Gorbachev defended the "principle of pluralism" which was "being put into practice" by the legislature. He added that any realistic transfer of "power to the Soviets" required "creating a system of democratic institutions."7 That the committee would have more than a token role was

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suggested in another report by then chairman of the Council of Ministers, Nikolai Ryzhkov. According to Ryzhkov, the leadership was initially "compelled to envision a traditional growth of defense expenses at a pace exceeding the growth of national income" in its planning for 1986-90, due to the "prevailing international system" and the persistence of an offensively-oriented Soviet military doctrine. However, he went on to say, things would be different as a result of subsequent developments: "In the spirit of restructuring and the development of glasnost, the procedure for working out and adopting decisions on defense questions will alter substantially. They will undoubtedly be examined in the same way as the state plan and budget." 8 With no objections, the first deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Anatoly Lukyanov, proposed Vladimir Lapygin to head the new Committee for Defense and State Security. Lapygin, a hitherto unknown defense industrialist, was at the time director of the "Kosmonavtika" production association, with predominant experience in the design of automated control systems for aircraft and space vehicles, including the Soviet space shuttle. 9 His committee was composed of some forty-three members of the Supreme Soviet, including Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, Gorbachev's principal security advisor; Oleg Belyakov, head of the Central Committee's Defense Department; Mikhail Simonov, director of the Sukhoi aircraft design bureau; General Vitaly Shabanov, the Deputy Minister of Defense for Armaments; and a variety of other deputies drawn from the armed forces, the defense industry, and the KGB. 10 The immediate impression formed in the West was that this committee would become a part of the broader challenge which the Supreme Soviet had already begun to present to traditional Soviet authority. For one thing, it comprised not only mainstream figures from the military-industrial complex, but also a fascinating blend of radicals and junior officers with highly eclectic attitudes toward Soviet security. These people seemed not only willing but even eager to go head to head with the military establishment. During his confirmation hearings in July, for example, Defense Minister Yazov was subjected to withering criticism by committee members, including an outspoken Soviet air force lieutenant. In the end, Yazov was only sustained in office by a personal intervention by Gorbachev and an eleventh-hour rule alteration that permitted his confirmation without an absolute majority.11 The formation of Lapygin's committee was undoubtedly interpreted by many would-be Soviet civilian defense experts as presenting an attractive opportunity for them to translate their long-suppressed ambitions into real policy influence. Such hope could only be heightened by the presence of their long-time sponsor, Aleksandr Yakovlev, as a Gorbachev confidant on

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the Politburo, along with Yevgenii Primakov as a leader in the Supreme Soviet and Academician Velikhov, Vice President of the Academy of Sciences, as the appointed head of one of Lapygin's three subcommittees.12 Thus far, however, such hopes appear to have been premature. To begin with, the CDSS is made up largely of mainstream conservatives who can be counted onto share the broad values of the national security establishment. Indeed, the committee has been repeatedly criticized by liberal members of the Supreme Soviet for its disproportionate "insider" representation. There is a widely shared view even among informed Soviet defense professionals that although the idea of a legislative oversight committee like the CDSS is a good one, this particular group is too heavily weighted with military-industrial personnel to be sufficiently detached or objective as an outside governing body. 13 Furthermore, Lapygin indicated early on that he had no plans for bringing aboard a contingent of outside consultants, since he lacked the necessary financial resources. Beyond that, he added in an interview, "why should military affairs be left to dilettantes? After all, it is very specialized. It takes years to understand its problems and peculiarities." 14 Finally, the CDSS remains of undetermined leverage and outlook. At the least, it is likely to face an uphill climb in establishing its presence in the political process, regardless of the extent to which it eventually enlists talent from outside the armed forces and the defense industry. For example, during a televised speech in which he sought to define a broad vision of his committee's responsibility, Lapygin was cut off in mid-sentence by an obviously irritated Gorbachev, who proceeded to scold him for voicing ambitions that were "premature" and that usurped the rightful prerogatives of the Defense Council. As the uppermost national security decisionmaking body, that collective retains final claim on many of the functions that Lapygin was seeking to ascribe to his own group. 15 Nevertheless, with the formation of the CDSS and the prospect it offers for significant legislative involvement in Soviet defense matters, the relationship between the armed forces and the civilian apparatus has entered a new era. At a minimum, the military's monopoly on defense information has been decisively broken, and new participants have been empowered to compete for a role in the policy process. All signs indicate that the committee is taking its responsibilities seriously and aims to carve out a significant "advise and consent" role much like that fulfilled by his counterpart committees in the US Congress. The MFA and its leaders have also left no room for doubt that a new rule book is being written and that they intend to establish a commanding role for themselves in the shaping of Soviet security policy. To be sure, there are indications that the MFA and the CDSS do not see

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eye to eye on many issues and that the latter will ally itself more closely with the Defense Ministry and the General Staff. For his own part, Lapygin seemed to appreciate that he faced a daunting challenge in establishing a role for his committee. After all, its existence has no precedent in Soviet experience. No doubt this explains much of the enthusiasm with which the CDSS has embraced a series of reciprocal exchange visits with members of the House Armed Services Committee in search of inspiration and guidance from its ostensible American "role model." In June 1990, Lapygin was replaced as CDSS head by Leonid Sharin, a party secretary from Amur Oblast and a reputed arch-conservative who had previously served as a committee member under Lapygin. Notwithstanding this development and the potential setback it implied for the committee's prospects as a reform element, it has been such trends as those discussed above that have set the stage and created opportunities for increased civilian involvement in the Soviet national security process. Only against this backdrop can the so-called "rise of the institutchiki"16 be properly understood. The long-frustrated civilian analysts who are now reaching for real relevance in the policy arena have little intrinsic power or political authority. Although they are increasingly developing an impressive base of professional credibility in their own right, they nevertheless owe their recent growth in prominence and future prospects largely to these broader developments that have given them a bureaucratic forum for the first time and a resultant opportunity to convert their outsider status into a genuine participatory role in Soviet defense politics. Moscow's aspiring civilian strategists The Soviet defense intellectual community is largely made up of members of the social science research institutes of the Academy of Sciences. Among the two dozen or more of these, the most important and well-known are the Institute of the USA and Canada and the Institute of World Economics and International Relations. Senior members of these institutes have figured prominently in Moscow's public diplomacy effort toward the West and in the internal Soviet defense debate since Gorbachev's assumption of leadership. This establishment, however, is by no means a product of the Gorbachev phenomenon in and of itself. On the contrary, its leading members have been in place and in pursuit of policy relevance since the mid-1950s.17 What is new is the dramatic growth that has occurred in the propensity of its members to voice controversial views on once-sensitive issues and in the solicitude the Soviet press has accorded their views since the implementation of glasnost.

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Although Moscow's international affairs specialists enjoyed a brief moment in the sun during the latter years of Khrushchev's rule, they were largely excluded from the policy mainstream throughout the Brezhnev era. 18 For nearly two decades, they were consigned to the demeaning role of academically justifying the various external positions adopted by the Soviet leadership, while the Brezhnev Politburo and the High Command maintained a virtual stranglehold over the details of Soviet defense policy. As one of the more noted younger representatives of this community, Alexei Arbatov, has since conceded, "in the early 1970s and 1980s, the study of international disarmament policy was regarded as a means of propaganda substantiation of our foreign policy. Only when the concept of new political thinking began to be realized . . . and past mistakes were properly weighed did it become clear that what was needed was a truly scientific treatment of disarmament problems and not a doctrine serving propaganda purposes." 19 To be sure, the institute community retains important propaganda functions notwithstanding such disclaimers. As the Kremlin's chief source of analytic enlightenment on Western thinking, it has mainly its carefullynurtured connections with foreign researchers and opinion elites to thank for its continued credibility on the home front. As one American has aptly noted of the institutchiki, "the exposure they receive in the United States has at times been great enough to give the Soviet Union a voice in the US domestic political process. Institute representatives participate as speakers at nuclear freeze rallies, make regular appearances on American television, attend academic conferences, serve as visiting fellows to US university centers, sit on the editorial boards of US academic journals, and contribute frequent op-ed articles for US newspapers." 20 Since the onset of the Gorbachev reforms, however, these scholars have also fought hard to be accepted by the leadership as a source of alternative counsel on Soviet security policy. Perhaps the main impetus behind their activism was Gorbachev's speech to the 27th Party Congress in 1986, which emphasized that the pursuit of Soviet security must entail not just military but also political means. Seen in hindsight, this may have been intended as a signal that the Foreign Ministry under Shevardnadze would be assuming a broadened role in the formulation of Soviet military and arms control policy. It may also have been offered as a declaration empowering the civilian analytic community to assume a more vigorous role in the emerging discourse on defense.21 A growing number of these institutchiki are proving by their writings that they have the required skills to deal with complex force posture issues. For years, these scholars were forced to make do as best they could using foreign source materials. They were also enjoined from addressing

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operational matters and were essentially left to write polemical books and articles masquerading as scholarship.22 Yet they are no less intellectually endowed than their Western counterparts. They also hold advanced degrees, are diligent researchers, and above all are analysts by inclination. It should only stand to reason that at a time when long-entrenched obstacles to serious defense research in the Soviet Union have begun to crumble, such individuals would briskly move in to fill the void. With their newly-acquired license to speak out on controversial issues, these analysts have produced a deluge of writings on such matters as strategic stability, the conventional balance in Europe, quantitative techniques in defense analysis, military doctrine, and arms control. 23 They have also, for the first time, begun to comment knowledgeably on past and current Soviet military doctrinal debates, a hitherto off-limits subject for Moscow's defense intelligentsia.24 This has been a welcome change for Western students of Soviet defense policy, who now have a rich new genre of source material to consider. Because they are not members of the Soviet defense bureaucracy, there remains much uncertainty about how much access these civilians enjoy. Nevertheless, they are making determined efforts to be taken seriously by Western defense experts and their own military. As a case in point, the emerging Soviet debate over military modeling offers a dramatic testament to the mounting struggle between the High Command and the analytic community for the high ground in determining Soviet weapons procurement programs and arms control policy. Until recently, the General Staff was the sole repository of technical expertise on military capability assessment. It was also the designated developer of officially-accepted techniques for the "scientific" evaluation of force effectiveness in a combat setting. As such, it was the main center of military modeling activity, and one decidedly closed to any access by civilian outsiders. Along with the recent flourishing of Soviet commentary on the conventional balance and the associated release of Soviet data on Warsaw Pact force dispositions, however, several nonmilitary centers of modeling activity have arisen to compete for the attention of the political leadership. The USA and Canada Institute is one such center. 25 In 1989, Major General Valentin Larionov, a retired army officer now serving as a consultant to the institute, proposed a systematic framework for evaluating the NATOWarsaw Pact balance and determining appropriate force reductions to achieve a stable relationship at lower levels.26 As a well-known theoretician with long-standing ties to the military community, Larionov is an unusually well-qualified "outsider" to have addressed such matters. Indeed, he is something of a middleman between the General Staff and the

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ambitious young civilians who are seeking to climb aboard the nowfashionable military modeling bandwagon. Without question, he commands a degree of credibility in military assessment that the civilian political scientists have yet to develop. At the same time, given his association with the USA Institute and his increasingly visible role in helping its key staffers gain stature in the eyes of the top leadership, Larionov must be viewed by military scientists on the General Staff as sharing at least some complicity in the mounting civilian challenge to Soviet military professionalism. IMEMO is also involved in developing competitive models of strategic stability in an effort to carve out a role for its members in the national security planning process. 27 According to one account, the MFA has begun to draw upon IMEMO's models to help bolster its bureaucratic goals in the development of Soviet conventional arms reduction plans. 28 Faced with continuing rebuffs in their efforts to gain direct access to the General Staff, at least some civilian researchers have apparently chosen to circumvent the armed forces altogether by pooling their talents and creating alternative centers of military analysis. Their motivation, obviously, is to establish at least a rudimentary conversancy with operational matters and thereby to gain recognition as a legitimate source of countervailing expertise in the defense debate. The emergence of competitive modeling as a new medium of strategic dialogue in the Soviet Union has increasingly put the General Staff on the defensive. Civilians are challenging the military's claim to exclusive authority in this realm with increasing bravado. One prominent computer scientist flatly asserted in this regard that the question of strategic force adequacy is "very complicated" and "cannot be solved . . . using military thinking . . . It will be not so much military as civilian experts - mathematicians, economists, ecologists - people capable of overcoming the usual stereotypes of thinking." 29 As a result of this civilian onslaught, a gathering intramural debate has been prompted among the General Staff's military scientists out of a dawning realization that they will have to do better if they wish to retain their preeminent standing in military balance assessment. The military is also nurturing ah institutional counterweight to the civilians in the AllUnion Scientific Institute for Systems Research (VNIISI). Although formally associated with the Academy of Sciences, this organization is heavily staffed by retired General Staff officers, who have joined the modeling debate in an attempt to engage the other institute analysts on their own terms. 30 One prominent member of the VNIISI staff, Vitaly Tsygichko, is a former military scientist who has written extensively on quantitative approaches to strategic and conventional balance assessment.31

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There is little doubt that the High Command has seen the handwriting on the wall, for it has evinced growing concern about protecting its pride of place as the final authority on military-technical matters. Before Gorbachev's ascendance to power, the General Staff had routinely supported its program recommendations through quantitative analysis based on its own models. It had also grown very comfortable with that arrangement. Insofar as the military's advice is now being challenged by civilian outsiders (and, evidently, increasingly ignored by the political leadership), it suggests that the General Staff's models may need improvement if they are to meet the policy needs of the Gorbachev regime. In this respect, there seems to be a consensus among the otherwise competitive military scientists and civilians that the USSR lacks good integrative models capable of handling highly aggregated force employment problems at the strategic level. Both groups are engaged in a major effort to develop better methods of quantitative analysis as each strives to capture the inside track in the unfolding debate over the military balance. In this respect, the Soviet defense community seems to be entering an experience much like the US national security community underwent in the early 1960s, as outside institutions like RAND and civilian experts in the McNamara Pentagon began to develop and apply rigorous techniques of systems analysis, forcing the services to come up with equally convincing ways of justifying their bureaucratic stances in the policy arena. It is too early to tell yet how this process will unfold. Clearly, however, the battle lines are being drawn and the General Staff is taking a hard look at what it must do to remain competitive with these upstart civilian challengers. "Military modeling" is rapidly becoming the new battleground in the Soviet defense debate, and the civilians have wasted little time in claiming it as their own as a means for taking the lead in the shaping of future Soviet national security policy. By far the most radical initiative taken by the civilian analysts under Gorbachev, however, was their argument that the USSR should reduce its forces unilaterally, regardless of how the West might respond. This idea was first broached over a year before Gorbachev's December 1988 announcement of unilateral troop cuts in a provocative article by Academician Zhurkin and two colleagues. Seen in retrospect, that article may have been an attempt by the institutchiki, perhaps even tacitly encouraged by Gorbachev, to lay the groundwork for a Soviet effort to match their words on doctrinal change with more tangible gestures. Although they granted that an appropriate mix of bilateral and multilateral reductions was the "principal avenue" for assuring international security, Zhurkin and his colleagues added that "it would be a mistake to regard the bilateral process of reducing armaments as the only possible

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way." 32 They further noted some past Soviet precedents along this line, in which "substantial measures to limit and reduce armaments" were "implemented unilaterally." And they emphasized that "despite their scale," these measures (notably a massive troop cut by Khrushchev in 1955-58) "by no means weakened the international positions of the USSR." Before long, such calls for action became widely echoed by the Soviet military's civilian critics. Almost invariably, these interventions stressed that the USSR possessed enough asymmetrical force advantages that it could easily afford such an approach. 33 Predictably, this argument prompted strong opposition from the High Command, whose leaders were unambiguous in rejecting such heresy. The most outspoken reply came from the commander of the Air Defense Forces, General Ivan Tretyak, who cited the earlier unilateral troop cut by Khrushchev as a case in point and had this to say about it: "As a professional military man, I'll tell you that the step was a rash one, it dealt a terrible blow to our defense capability and at our officer personnel . . . To be honest, we are still feeling this. Therefore, any changes in our army should be considered a thousand times over before they are decided upon. Temporary benefits are a great lure. But I repeat once again - the most important thing is to have a reliable defense . . . We must have as much force as is necessary to guarantee reliably the security of the USSR and our allies." 34 At first, it seemed that the civilian proponents of unilateralism were well ahead of Gorbachev on the issue and were merely using glasnost to engage in personal advocacy. When Gorbachev finally announced at the United Nations in December 1988 his decision to effect a unilateral drawdown of 500,000 men, with associated reductions in tanks and fighter aircraft, however, it became clear that the Soviet leader had, from the beginning, been indulging these arguments with his own objectives in mind. Typical of the initial suggestions along this line was a remark by Lev Semeiko during a roundtable on conceivable variants of "reasonable sufficiency." Semeiko stopped short of advocacy and merely acknowledged that "such actions, even if unilateral, would demonstrate that the given side adheres to a defensive military doctrine." 35 A more direct call for unilateral cuts was voiced by the dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov in a speech in Washington less than a month before Gorbachev's troop-reduction announcement. "The size of the Soviet military," declared Sakharov, "is greater than that of any three Western countries combined . . . The best thing . . . for the Soviet side to do would be a unilateral reduction of military forces . . . A large-scale cutback would in no way jeopardize the security of the Soviet Union." 36 Considering that Academician Sakharov was, by that time, an outspoken activist with little claim to establishment status in the defense arena, it is

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doubtful that his statement was in any way connected to Gorbachev's subsequent announcement. Yet the fact that such calls for unilateral cuts could persist for so long in the face of rising military displeasure bore strong testimony to the widening gap between Gorbachev and the High Command. It also reflected the unprecedented latitude for free expression which the civilians have acquired since Gorbachev's rise to power. Taken together, this increasingly bold civilian assault against the military and its corporate values could not have occurred without Gorbachev's backing. Yet the Soviet leader has not done well at controlling the discourse he has unleashed. On some issues, there has been a sufficient diversity of views expressed to make it hard to connect them to more authoritative thinking. For this reason, Gorbachev has good ground to worry about the manifold opportunities for political mischief that have been created by his policy of glasnost. As much as his long-term goals may be supported by this groundswell of discordant opinion, he will need to walk a careful path to avoid alienating the armed forces irretrievably. Military reactions to the new civilian role By and large, the Soviet military has appeared until recently to be grudgingly supportive of perestroika, insofar as the latter has sought to bolster those sectors of the economy that promise to affect long-term military performance. Defense Minister Yazov himself has frequently railed against "inertia" in military practice, and there have been scores of articles in the military press underscoring the need to reduce waste and inefficiency, seek greater value from existing assets, and so on. 37 The Cessna incident of May 1987 which prompted a wholesale shakeup of the High Command merely punctuated the felt need for firmer measures to enhance the organizational effectiveness of the armed forces.38 Although the generals are uncomfortable with some of the language of Gorbachev's policies, they have a natural incentive to support that aspect of perestroika that promises to enhance the combat capabilities of the armed forces. They also have good reason to endorse Gorbachev's call for a shift toward defensive emphasis, insofar as that approach promises a satisfactory answer to ongoing developments in Western conventional arms technology.39 Where the military has dug in its heels has been with regard to Gorbachev's defense budget cuts and unilateral force reductions. This unhappiness has been especially reflected in the High Command's increasing impatience with the advocacy of these measures by civilians who, in the military's view, lack the professionalism and technical competence to render such judgments responsibly. There have been numerous signs of a military backlash against this unwelcome meddling in defense matters by

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what the High Command regards, with open disdain, as a pack of self-promoting academic dilettantes. Marshal Akhromeyev himself indicated the emerging stance of the General Staff when he remarked that "defensive adequacy cannot be viewed one-sidedly, irrespective of the balance of armed forces taking shape. It would . . . be a mistake to regard it as one-sided disarmament and unilateral reduction of our defense efforts." 40 Once Gorbachev's UN announcement ended the first round of internal debate over the unilateral force reduction issue, the military followed party discipline and expressed its support for the decision, at least publicly. There were numerous indications of military uneasiness, however, over what will happen when a half-million of its servicemen, including a large number of officers, are summarily thrust into a hostile civilian environment, with its woefully inadequate employment market and housing situation. There have also been numerous letters from junior officers, undoubtedly endorsed by higher headquarters, warning of the challenge which the troop cut decision has presented to the Soviet soldier: "No one," wrote one captain at the Lenin Military-Political Academy, "is relieving us military men of the responsibility for maintaining the country's defense capability." 41 All in all, the High Command has neared the end of its rope with the unprecedented abuses it has been forced to endure as a result of the new freedoms of expression granted by glasnost. It is one thing to have been saddled with such an objectionable decision as the troop reduction. Even Brezhnev, after all, earned the enmity of his military leaders as a consequence of his doctrinal tinkering and the defense budget cuts he imposed toward the end of his incumbency. 42 Although the military has been plainly unhappy with Gorbachev's announced force reductions, it has conducted itself with professional deportment by showing due obeisance to the policy, even as it has been less than enthusiastic about supporting it. It is quite another thing, however, for the High Command to have been so openly challenged by civilian outsiders on its own turf as the principal source of defense expertise. There is little question that Gorbachev has encouraged these analysts to support his initiatives and reform proposals. This raises the question of how long the General Staff, as the net loser in this game, will continue to indulge these interlopers before drawing the line forcefully against such incursions into its professional domain. Increasingly since 1987, military spokesmen have closed ranks and mounted a spirited counterattack against these upstart challenges to their authority and rectitude. The High Command's increasing indignation over such treatment was powerfully reflected in an essay by a well-known civilian supporter, Aleksandr Prokhanov. That article began by noting the

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popular argument that the army "is a threatening, awesome force that has led to the militarization of the world, to the militarization of history, to the militarization of life." 43 It further acknowledged the prevalent view that "because of its inflexible, conservative, closed nature," the Soviet military "is the source of all that is stagnant and conservative, of everything that rejects the new thinking, perpstroika, and experimental models of behavior for the nation and the state." Finally, it noted the allegation that the army has "become lazy in recent years" and is guilty of "having lost its combat knowhow and of therefore failing to cope with its military obligations . . . of frequently not knowing what it is doing . . . for being in a rut, for lagging in large measure behind modern military doctrine." As examples, the author cited the Rust affair, the Korean airliner shootdown, and the unimpressive record of Soviet combat performance in Afghanistan. In responding to this rash of criticism, Prokhanov conceded that the military was obliged to accept accountability for its shortcomings. However, he reminded his readers that the Soviet army "has helped us survive as a sovereign society that has not been thrashed by the mighty Western civilizations" and, in so doing, "has performed its mission." Considering the many sacrifices the armed forces have made in the name of the Soviet state, Prokhanov bridled at how "liberals" were conspiring to give military men, particularly the Afghan veterans, "an inferiority complex, to make them into social victims on the altar of an unnecessary and terrible slaughter." In an emotional defense of the solemn duty of Soviet citizens to honor their fighting men, Prokhanov then said: God forbid, if a crisis should arise, the state will need people who have been tested and who are willing to sacrifice themselves. I do not think that the peace-minded youth - the rockers, the breakers, the punks - will be ready to sacrifice themselves to save the Fatherland. If the time comes to sweat blood, they may not be ready to do so. Therefore, the Afghan veteran who is prepared for sacrifice must be cared for, cherished, tended, and surrounded with ideological and social concern and special treatment." Why? Because any challenge to Soviet security in the future "cannot be met by the Union of Writers, nor by a super literature dreamed up by pacifistically-minded writers, nor by informal youth groups, nor by rock groups singing peace songs, but only by the defense industry, only by the army. This hot-tempered foray into the mounting contretemps between the military and its critics was unusual in its stridency. It was also unrepresentative of the more measured tone that has been struck by the High Command in its effort to stand up for its interests and prerogatives. As a romantic exaltation of martial values in defense of the Soviet state, it was of a piece with the resurgent Russian nationalism that has been championed by such reactionary groups as Pamyat in response to the perceived excesses prompted by glasnost. Yet clearly it reflected broader military sentiment,

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and its appearance in a prominent literary forum indicated that the High Command is still capable of looking after itself. At a more subdued level, there have been similar expressions of military displeasure over the mounting disrespect that has been heaped upon it by the media. For example, Colonel General (now General of the Army) Makhmut Gareyev, a leading military scientist and deputy chief of the General Staff, noted how "some press organs" were "beginning to call into question" the continued existence of an external threat to Soviet security. Gareyev cautioned that although Soviet military personnel are "sincerely committed to the ideas of peace and the prevention of war," the "harsh reality is that along with positive changes in the international situation, the military preparations of the imperialist states must be reckoned with . . . without forgetting for a moment that massive professional armies stand against us." 4 4 He then complained about numerous "instances of unobjective coverage of individual aspects of the activity of the troops and fleets, a biased approach to individual cases, and distorted interpretations of them." Finally, Gareyev insisted that a line needed to be drawn against the increasing public demands for the release of classified defense information. While noting that "many censorship restrictions on tactics and certain types of military hardware have been lifted," he said that "this process has its limits, because much information that constitutes state and military secrets cannot be revealed in the interests of ensuring the country's reliable defense capability.'' The military's reaction to the more general sniping by civilian critics empowered to speak out by the permissiveness of glasnost has mainly reflected a sense of injured pride and resigned exasperation over such treatment. 45 By contrast, its response to the defense intellectuals who have sought high policy influence at the General Staff's expense has been both specific and sharply focused. Not only has the High Command shown an abiding distaste for being lectured to by untutored amateurs, it has reflected a strong determination to protect the inviolability of what it considers its rightful prerogatives in the formulation of Soviet defense policy. On numerous occasions, senior officers have cast a condescending look at these civilian pretenders in a manner suggesting that they regard them, in effect, as boys trying to accomplish a man's job. In one of the first such military outbursts, Major General Yuriy Lebedev noted in 1988 how the "discussions held last year among scientific and public circles in the USSR demonstrated the inadequate training of political scientists in questions of military doctrine, an inclination to draw rash conclusions at times, and a lack of the professionalism which is so necessary for the analysis of military-political problems." He added that "this can be explained partly by poor specialized training and partly by the

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fact that some of the people drawn into the discussion - current affairs commentators, academics in related professions (economists, geographers, and even linguists), journalists, and writers - had only a very vague notion of the subject under discussion." 46 A similar attack on the civilian analysts was made by the head of the armed forces' Main Political Administration, General Alexei Lizichev, who observed that "our social scientists are failing to keep up with the pace of change both in our country and in the countries of our friends and allies." Lizichev also complained about how "attempts to erode Marxist-Leninist teachings on war and the army and Leninist tenets about the role of the armed forces and defense of the socialist fatherland have become more frequent." 47 In the summer of 1989, the gloves finally came off in what bore every sign of a looming competition in name-calling between the military and the civilian analysts. Two military authors directly rebutted an article by two institutchiki who had advocated radical cuts in Soviet strategic nuclear forces. Noting how the civilians had suggested that "more than 95 percent" of the USSR's nuclear warheads "can be liquidated unilaterally without harming our security," the military respondents replied that this only took into account those forces required to assure "unacceptable damage" against any attacker. They also said it failed to consider that superior enemy forces could help underwrite "political pressure and blackmail" and "the necessity of having at least minimum reserves to counter the possibility of scientific and engineering breakthroughs." Using these errors as examples, the military writers cited the indispensability of "profound research, rather than the dubious arguments used by the authors, such as 'as we see it,' 'in our opinion,' 'apparently,' . . . and others." Such research, which the authors implied only military professionals are fully capable of providing, offers the only acceptable basis "for determining the composition of strategic attack weapons, the strategy for their combat employment, and conditions for disarmament." 48 A similar ad hominem riposte occurred later that summer when Marshal Akhromeyev was queried about the Soviet position on mobile ICBMs during his appearance before the US House Armed Services Committee. When confronted by one of the members with a statement that Deputy Foreign Minister Karpov had recently expressed his support for a mutual ban on such missiles, Akhromeyev tartly replied that this view was "the personal opinion of Mr. Karpov" and did not represent official Soviet policy.49 General Moiseyev likewise weighed in along these lines in a reply to an angry letter to the MPA's journal from a hardline conservative named Nina Koldayeva. In her letter* which may have been solicited by the journal in

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the first place to provide Moiseyev a pretext for speaking out, Koldayeva complained of an insufficiently high level of public debate over the unilateral troop reduction issue. She then asked why the expert opinions of Soviet military leaders were so little publicized, while "the views of Academician G. A. Arbatov are given a very wide presentation." Citing Arbatov's alleged "incompetence in military matters" and the "extent to which the man lacks any concept of the country's painful issues," she finally wrote: "How can it be that you, as literate, honorable, and courageous people, professionals performing a difficult service, hardened, and still enjoying enormous support among the people, cannot stand up for yourselves? Why is your voice so weak?" In his reply, Moiseyev first granted that the letter was, as the writer admitted, "somewhat excessively emotional." Then, having taken the high road, he said: "I myself am frequently surprised by the way in which many authors discuss the problems of the army hastily and incompetently and try to impose their own point of view as the ultimate truth." Conceding that "I would be committing a severe sin against the truth if I said to you that among the military . . . there was a complete unanimity of views on questions of reorganizing the armed forces," Moiseyev nevertheless stated bluntly: I agree with you entirely, Nina Petrovna, that for the most part the formation of public opinion on defense questions among the civilian audience is unfortunately still not being dealt with by professionals . . . Today, "military theorists," whose notion of the life of the armed forces is at best derived from a few cinemafilmsand a few books they have read, are eager to share (and do share) their sensational revelations and "unbiased" evaluations with an audience of many thousands, many millions of Soviet viewers, listeners, and readers. Many of them have not only not . . . performed the sacred duty of a USSR citizen in the ranks of the armed forces, but even flaunt this fact. They declare that it is precisely this circumstance which allows them to look at the army "with fresh eyes," "without prejudice," "unblinking," and so forth. This is, of course, an absurdity, if not a lie.50 The clear message in these military responses to growing civilian pretensions in the national security realm seemed to be that beyond a point, such analysts were beyond their depth and had no business poking their noses into Soviet force structure discussions. A subsequent round in this escalating contest set a new tone of stridency, perhaps reflecting a growing military awareness that at least some civilian experts are establishing ever more solid footholds in the defense policy arena. In an article entitled "On Sufficiency of Defense and an Insufficiency of Competence," Major General Liubimov of the General Staff Academy unfolded a diatribe against an earlier article by Alexei Arbatov that was downright nasty in its treatment of the civilian analyst.51 Several months

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earlier, Arbatov had gone considerably further than any of his previous writings in laying down what Harry Gelman has called "the most detailed argument and blueprint for radical Soviet unilateral force reduction ever published in the Soviet Union." 52 Casting caution to the wind, Arbatov argued, among other things, for a significant reduction in Soviet air defenses; for abandoning the Moscow ABM; for cutting back by some two-thirds Soviet ground forces in the forward area; for drastically lowering the number of Soviet tactical aircraft; for trimming back the Soviet Navy to its former role of providing only coastal defense; and for imposing draconian measures to end the costly practice of deploying redundant weapons. Whatever its motivation, Arbatov's message seemed calculated to infuriate the General Staff. Not insignificantly, his article appeared in the Foreign Ministry's monthly journal, which had by then become a house organ for civilian critics of the armed forces, as well as a vital instrument in Shevardnadze's personal campaign to wrest the national security portfolio from the Defense Ministry. General Liubimov was selected to fire the return volley. He did so in a manner revealing the full displeasure of the High Command. After apparently having been turned down by the Foreign Ministry's journal in an effort to get a reply to Arbatov published there, Liubimov turned to the Military's political administration, which promptly gave him a platform in Kommunist vooruzhenykh sil. Although more angry than analytical and rather undistinguished in its substantive content, Liubimov's article seemed to constitute vivid proof that Arbatov has finally burned his bridges with the General Staff. Barring a dramatic change in his point of view, or at least in his manner of conveying it, the aspiring strategist will be hard put to count on anything but military opposition to his continued quest for influence over Soviet defense planning. 53 Liubimov's article also sent a warning to other civilians who might wish to cultivate a dialogue with the High Command to show proper respect for military expertise and due appreciation of their own limitations. Those civilians like Alexei Arbatov who have made a point of publicly savaging the Soviet military have almost certainly bet their careers on the continued livelihood of the nascent Soviet political reform movement set in motion by Gorbachev. These people are not interested in a cooperative dialogue with the armed forces. Rather, they have chosen to compete for influence at the military's expense. Whether the High Command can successfully weather this attempt to undermine its traditional power base remains to be seen. But it was clear, until its recent reassertion of institutional authority, that the Soviet military realized that it was on the defensive in seeking the ear of Gorbachev and his allies. The High

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Command may still have concluded that it will have to engage its civilian challengers on their own terms if they are to retain a significant voice in the Soviet defense debate. In the meantime, almost surely at least some in the armed forces and elsewhere in the security bureaucracy have quietly begun to take names with a view toward settling scores if and when the fortunes of Gorbachev's rapidly faltering democratization effort begin to wane. 54 Assessing the extent of civilian influence The unusual prominence that has been accorded to the new civilian contenders in the ongoing defense debate indicates that at least until recently, they commanded the indirect patronage of Gorbachev. The academics, in particular, probably enjoyed the day-to-day protection of Aleksandr Yakovlev, a former director of the Institute of World Economics and International Relations (IMEMO), throughout the time he was Gorbachev's closest associate on the Politburo. Once banished by Brezhnev to a ten-year exile as Soviet ambassador to Canada for his maverick inclinations, Yakovlev was brought back to Moscow by Gorbachev in May 1983, first to head IMEMO and then to join the ranks of the Politburo. Until his falling out with Gorbachev in 1990, his responsibilities included overseeing the implementation of Soviet national security policy. This meant, among other things, managing the restructuring of the armed forces and the integration of military policy into broader Soviet foreign and economic policy.55 Ultimately, the professional and political fortunes of these intellectuals, most notably whether they will advance from the status of ambitious outsiders to that of accredited insiders with real authority, will depend heavily on the prospects for continued movement toward democratization and institutional pluralism in the USSR. As this movement has been threatened increasingly by Gorbachev's recent reversion to conservatism, many of these defense intellectuals have now openly swung their allegiance from Gorbachev to his political nemesis, Boris Yeltsin. Notwithstanding the current turmoil in Soviet domestic politics, many of the civilian specialists who have spoken out on defense matters so openly since 1987 have expressed a clear vision of their proper role in the Soviet defense process. Some, especially the younger and more aggressive institute researchers, appear less driven by any particular policy orientation than by a strong career-oriented desire to broaden the arena of defense policy making and to stake out a more influential place for themselves in it. Those most obviously on a fast track radiate an astonishing degree of self-assurance in their new-found visibility and status. Andrei Kokoshin, for one, responded to a question about how to understand the contrapuntal

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rhetoric emanating from Soviet military writers by dismissing those writers as being politically irrelevant: You must distinguish between our military philosophers, who occupy themselves with these doctrinal matters, and our military professionals, who are interested only in operational concepts. I would caution you not to attach too much weight to the pronouncements of the military philosophers.56 Relatedly, when asked whether his own articles had been incorporated into the General Staff Academy's curriculum, Kokoshin answered: "Not yet." He allowed, though, that they had been "widely discussed" and that this had been made possible because "our military men are now more open-minded than they used to be." As evidence, Kokoshin pointed with pride to a recent article on strategic stability that he had written for Krasnaia zvezda - "the first time an article of this type has appeared in our military press." 57 In a similar vein, Alexei Arbatov was sharply derisive of what he termed "political lyric poetry" - the stock in trade of most institutchiki prior to Gorbachev's arrival - and called for "professional analysis of a multitude of specific issues." 58 In particular, he defended the need for a "scientific basis for actual steps pertaining to the strengthening of security," since "as soon as one switches from abstract argument to specific means and methods . . . it is necessary to speak at the same time about strategy, weapons systems, and the material content of the balance, parity, equal security, stability, and other concepts." Arbatov argued for an integrative perspective combining political, strategic, economic, and technical considerations and offering independent counsel from outside the armed forces. He rejected hollow phrasemongering and exhorted would-be defense professionals to acquire the expertise that this challenge presents: "It is here where serious scientific analysis and a firm theoretical foundation are more important than anywhere. However, it should not consist of polished words suitable for all occasions and handsome in their infallibility and uselessness, but be based on both a knowledge of the most intricate specifics . . . and on broad conceptual thinking, taking as a starting point the new philosophy of security." Arbatov was frank to admit that he and his colleagues face an uphill climb in establishing the needed credibility for this pursuit: "Are the representatives of our academic community always on a par with these demands at the present time? Not always and in all things . . . The years of stagnation, estrangement from practice, artificial isolation, and selfisolation have taken their toll in this sphere. This applies to one extent or another to the science of international politics as a whole and, most, to its

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political-military and arms control schools. Theoretical thought in this sphere was for many years covered by dense extraneous propaganda features and began to lose its capacity for independent, critical analysis." Arbatov also conceded that "this has not gone unnoticed in the West." In an indication of his touchiness on this score, he quoted a remark by Stephen Meyer that Soviet civilian academics should not be taken seriously by Western analysts because they lack inside information and are mainly propagandists. 59 Although Arbatov rejected this comment as "an insulting opinion . . . expressing the author's personal malevolence," he allowed with chagrin that it contained "unfortunately . . . an element of truth." He added, however, that it was unfairly "indiscriminate and inapplicable to many Soviet analysts," who, alleged Arbatov, "are involved in close interaction with practical departments with far more important matters than pure propaganda." Whether such "close interaction" involves any sharing of classified data or substantive dialogue beyond casual banter cannot be known on the strength of Arbatov's assertion. Nevertheless, Arbatov granted that the prevailing lot of the defense-intellectual community was in need of major change if any progress is to be made: "A significant expansion of the publication of our own information, facts, and evaluations," he insisted, is an absolute sine qua non. Otherwise, he said, any academic attempt to contribute usefully to the defense debate would be "condemned to onesidedness and isolation from real life." A notable feature of Gorbachev's leadership style as he has worked to secure his domestic footing against the forces of "stagnation" in Soviet politics has been his campaign to siphon off power from its familiar stronghold in the Communist Party apparatus and to concentrate it instead in the Supreme Soviet, in the key government bureaucracies, and in himself as the nominal leader of the Soviet state. In the process, he has emasculated the Central Committee Secretariat, disestablished the Politburo, and, in so doing, sought to neutralize the main bastion of internal opposition to his reform efforts.60 Beyond that, he has seemed bent on consigning the party to political limbo, if not irrelevance, by empowering those agencies with action responsibilities to play a more vigorous role in formulating domestic and foreign policy, much along the lines of a secular Western state. 61 His effort to promote greater involvement in policy deliberations by the civilian defense experts and thus help break the High Command's traditional monopoly on defense matters has been centrally tied to this broader campaign to disperse power and authority within the Soviet system. The future of this trend is uncertain and remains heavily bound up with the broader outlook for Gorbachev's reform efforts, which increasingly

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appear to be faltering. For the moment, however, the Soviet academic community has sensed an opening and is still pursuing it with determination. Their spirit was passionately reflected in this injunction of Academician Sagdeyev: "Full of the noble pathos of renewal, we are boldly crushing everything that in the sad time of stagnation got in our way, and we're not keeping quiet about its direct culprits." 62 A more measured expression of the same feeling was contained in Georgii Arbatov's remark that "some time ago, we established a system that was by no means best for our security - the bad tradition of keeping everything concerning defense, the army, and weapons top secret . . . Now the time when defense issues were above criticism is coming to an end. I think this can only benefit the people, their armed forces, and the state." 63 Conclusions Gorbachev has unleashed some powerful forces within the Soviet defense arena. By his expansion of the number of players, the availability of military-technical data, the license to hold forth on controversial issues, and the resultant diversity of inputs into the defense debate, he appears to be seeking a fundamental change in the structure of defense decision making by imbuing it with real institutional, and even political, pluralism. In response to this broadened license to participate in the national security process, some civilian bureaucrats have come to show remarkable bravado in their public attitudes toward their military colleagues. One example was the condescending remark ventured by a Gorbachev aide during the Soviet president's visit to New York in December 1988 when asked by a reporter why there were no military men on Gorbachev's delegation. "We've got Yakovlev," the advisor smugly replied. "He's a reserve officer."64 One should take care, however, not to conclude from this still nascent trend that Soviet security planning is invariably headed toward convergence with our own. As Stephen Larrabee has warned, even though the role of civilians in the Soviet defense debate has expanded under Gorbachev's leadership, "they do not yet constitute the type of institutionalized defense and arms control counter-elite that exists in the United States. Their involvement is to a large extent ad hoc and often depends more on personal relationships than on formal channels." 65 Indeed, it is far from certain that any such convergence is even on the cards. The recent rise of civilian involvement in the Soviet defense debate has been much more a political than an institutional phenomenon. As such, it remains inseparably linked to Gorbachev's personal inclinations and should not be regarded, at least yet, as a natural outgrowth of the heightened pluralism in Soviet foreign and defense policy more generally.

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As one alternative, Sergei Zamascikov has suggested that "the greater prominence of arms control in Soviet military doctrine" has naturally made "the USA and Canada Institute, the World Economy Institute (IMEMO), and the USSR Academy of Sciences in general more important as Soviet spokesmen on this subject in the West." 66 These analysts are counters in a higher-level contest for the control of the defense agenda between Gorbachev and the old-school national security establishment. Increasingly one can see positions being marked out on both sides. To note just one indicator, it is hardly by accident that the recent increase in access enjoyed by the civilian defense analysts has been through the Foreign Ministry rather than the Defense Ministry. Among the many plausible explanations for the recent growth in the visibility and prominence of Moscow's defense intellectuals is their role as supporting players in a bureaucratic tug of war between Shevardnadze and the High Command, a competition that has taken a turn for the worse for the civilian outsiders, unfortunately, since Shevardnadze's resignation.67 Although the present encroachment of civilian influence in Soviet defense planning remains formative and of uncertain outcome, it nevertheless warrants scrutiny as a trend with important implications for the East-West relationship. As one assessment has noted, the continuing erosion of the High Command's monopoly on defense-related information and expertise "offers promise to any Western effort to influence security perceptions in the Soviet Union in a positive direction." 68 The progressive institutionalization of a multiple-advocacy system in Soviet strategic policy formulation would increase the likelihood that other than narrow militarytechnical and service-specific considerations will begin to govern Soviet defense resource apportionment. 69 This might, in turn, allow for greater integration of military planning into broader Soviet domestic and foreign policy calculations. Although such a development would by no means assure an easing of the East-West competition in and of itself, it would certainly heighten the prospect for a moderation in the terms and modalities of that competition. To that extent, it is a trend that should be encouraged by the United States. The main pitfall for the West to avoid is making a fait accompli in its own mind out of what remains a highly unfinished quest for increased civilian involvement in Soviet defense planning. Although there is good reason to be encouraged by the recent signs of progress toward increased "civilianization" of the Soviet defense policy process, we must weigh what these civilians are saying against other, perhaps equally important, opposing views expressed from other quarters - and not just among the services. Beyond that, analysis of civilian involvement in the Soviet defense debate must remain closely attentive to the specifics of the various protagonists,

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such as their institutional affiliation, their personal interests and motivations, their relative access and authoritativeness, and their most senior contacts and patrons within the leadership. It must also allow for the possibility that official statements that happen to coincide with known views of the defense intellectuals may be as much a result of happenstance as of causality. Those in the leadership responsible for the prevailing vector of policy almost certainly have motivations larger than simply the advancement of the defense intelligentsia.70 As has been the case throughout their two-decade-old history, the defense intellectuals' ties to the policy apparatus have been largely personal rather than institutional, and their influence has been entirely at the indulgence of the ruling elite. Stephen Meyer has, I believe correctly, rejected the notion that these civilian analysts are in any way "the engines of the new political thinking." Instead, he has portrayed their recent rise to prominence as "a by-product - a consequence - of Gorbachev's new political thinking" and has suggested that they have good ground to be concerned "about his continued willingness to let them play in defense politics." 71 There is no denying that many of the civilian analysts have, at least until the recent turn toward conservatism in the Soviet Union, been transmitting on the same political frequency as Gorbachev. Yet this begs the question of what real influence and access they have established. Clearly Gorbachev has used these people to advance his personal interests, to add supportive voices to the internal debate over strategy, and to act as lightning rods for counter-criticism from the military and other conservatives. Yet it does not follow that this equates to anything like actual hands-on leverage in the policy process. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now opened its doors to selected invitees from among the institutional academics. Yet in evaluating this, we must remember that the MFA remains pitted in a bureaucratic adversary relationship with the Defense Ministry and the General Staff for control over the direction and content of Soviet security planning. It is within the latter two organizations that the operational and technical details of Soviet defense policy continue to be worked out. And there is no sign yet that civilians have been brought into that closed arena - or are likely to be in the foreseeable future. Should the defense intellectuals nevertheless consolidate their gains and become a credible countervailing influence on Soviet defense policy, a plausible response by the services - as occurred in the United States when McNamara brought his civilian systems analysts into the Pentagon in 1961 - could be to accept the challenge, cast aside their old ways, and acquire the vocabulary and needed skills to compete with these civilians on their own terms. 72

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Either way, the developments etched out above attest to a fitful effort by Gorbachev to impose a maturation on the Soviet system from above. Some would argue that this effort is predetermined to fail sooner or later, on the premise that communist systems are inherently unreformable. Whatever the case, as Samuel Huntington pointed out two decades ago, "just as economic development depends, in some measure, on the relationship between investment and consumption, political order depends in part on the relation between the development of political institutions and the mobilization of new social forces into politics." 73 Such a process is clearly reflected in the broadened civilian involvement in Soviet defense politics that has unfolded since Gorbachev's arrival. As such, it represents a major step forward in Soviet political modernization. Over the long haul, of course, there is no assurance that Gorbachev himself, let alone his sought-after reforms, will survive the profound forces that currently threaten the disintegration of the Soviet state. Alternatives to perestroika have been vocally articulated across a wide spectrum of Soviet opinion, and there are darker scenarios of the Soviet future that range from a reversion to political stasis and accelerated decline, perhaps even into civil war, to the establishment of a military-bureaucratic praetorian guard, with unknown and possibly grave consequences for international security. Should the bottom fall out from under Gorbachev in this or any other manner, the trends discussed above could easily end up becoming a passing anomaly in Soviet history. For the moment, however, it is irrelevant whether the civilian contenders for influence in the Soviet defense arena are accepted by the military or, as increasingly seems to be the case, are regarded by them as entrenched adversaries to be resisted with every measure available. The fact is that Gorbachev has consciously sought to broaden the base of participation in Soviet defense politics and thus enrich the quality and breadth of inputs into Soviet security planning. Those defense intellectuals and other civilians who have spent years waiting patiently for this moment have been quick to identify and seize opportunities to enter the fray as a result. Their ultimate success, if it occurs, may or may not mean an end to the historic competition between the Soviet Union and the West. It will, however, guarantee that any relationship that eventually emerges will entail a more cosmopolitan Soviet adversary and a major alteration in the geopolitical challenge it represents. Notes 1 Quoted in David J. Lynch, "Gorbachev's Military Feels Reform Pinch," Defense Week, May 1, 1989, p. 13. 2 Jack Snyder, "The Gorbachev Revolution: A Waning of Soviet Expansionism?"

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International Security, Winter 1987/88, pp. 109-110. See also Josephine J. Bonan, The Current Debate Over Soviet Defense Policy, The RAND Corporation, P-7526, January 1989, p. 10. The first and still best exposition of this point is Stephen M. Meyer, "The Sources and Prospects of Gorbachev's New Political Thinking on Security," International Security, Fall 1988, pp. 124-163. See John Van Oudenaren, Shevardnadze and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Making of Soviet Defense and Arms Control Policy, The RAND Corporation, R-3898-USDP, June 1990. Statement of E. A. Shevardnadze at a meeting of the aktiv of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "On the Practical Tasks of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Realization of the Ideas and Positions Expressed in the Speech of M. S. Gorbachev at the UN on December 7, 1988," Vestnik Ministerstva Inostrannykh DelSSSR, no. 23 (1988), iv. Molly Moore, "Soviet Defense Panel Charts New Frontier With Help From Friends on the Hill," Washington Post, August 14, 1989. See also Michael R. Gordon, "Soviets Are Trying Out Legislative Oversight of the Military," New York Times, August 14, 1989. Speech by M. S. Gorbachev at a Congress of People's Deputies session in the Kremlin, Moscow television service, June 9, 1989. Report by N. Ryzhkov to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies, Moscow television service, June 7, 1989. Viktor Yasmann, "Supreme Soviet Committee to Oversee KGB," Radio Liberty Research, RL 284/89, June 21, 1989. See the report by Mark Lowenthal, The New Soviet Legislature: Committee on Defense and State Security, Report of the Committee on Armed Services, US House of Representatives, Washington, DC, April 11, 1990. The young officer in question, Senior Lieutenant Nikolai Tutov, was bold enough to say that "Dmitri T. Yazov has no real conception of perestroika in the armed forces." Quoted in Bill Keller, "Young Officers in Attack on Soviet Defense Chief," New York Times, July 4, 1989. On the armed forces, the other two concerning military production and intelligence, respectively. This impression derives from conversations that my RAND colleagues John Hines, Eugene Rumer, and I had with senior defense industry and academic institute representatives during a trip to Moscow in December 1989. Quoted in Scott Shane, "Soviets Set Up Committee to Oversee Defense, KGB," Baltimore Sun, June 27, 1989. Lapygin later conceded that "in addition to reports and information provided by government bodies," his committee would "rely on the analyses of independent experts." He did not specify, however, who those experts would be and reiterated that his own staff would be limited to ten people "because we don't have enough money." Interview in Moscow News, no. 36 (September 10-17, 1989), 6. Lapygin's proclaimed functions included questioning the General Staff on the meaning of "reasonable sufficiency," reviewing the Defense Ministry's Arms development programs, and "controlling the Armed Forces." Speech before the Supreme Soviet, Moscow television service, June 28, 1989. Edward L. Warner III, "New Thinking and Old Realities in Soviet Defense Policy," Survival, January/February 1989, p. 18.

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17 See Benjamin S. Lambeth, Moscow's Defense Intellectuals, The RAND Corporation, P-7545, January 1990 (originally written in January 1970). 18 Except for a few senior members like Georgii Arbatov, who carefully cultivated the Party elite and were consultants of varying influence. A good account of the contributions made by the various social science institutes during the Khrushchev period is offered in William Zimmerman, Soviet Perspectives on International Relations: 1956-1967 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969). 19 Interview with I. Konstantinov, "Stability Was at Its Peak in the Early 1970s," New Times (Moscow), no. 26 (June 1988), pp. 10-11. This bears out the recollections offered a decade ago by Galina Orionova, a former research staffer at the USA and Canada, as reported in Nora Beloff, "Escape from Boredom: A Defector's Story," The Atlantic Monthly, November 1980, pp. 42-50. See also Barbara L. Dash, A Defector Reports: The Institute of the USA and Canada (Falls Church, VA: Delphic Associates, May 1982). 20 William C. Green, Soviet Nuclear Weapons Policy: A Research and Bibliographic Guide (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), p. 389. 21 Among the most prominent senior institutchiki are Vitaly Zhurkin, the recently appointed head of the Institute of Europe; Yevgenii Primakov, formerly of the Institute of World Economics and International Relations; and Georgii Arbatov, the head of the Institute of the USA and Canada. The most visible younger institute scholars are Alexei Arbatov and Andrei Kokoshin. The senior contingent also embraces a number of retired military officers, including Lieutenant General Mikhail Milshtein, Major General Valentin Larionov, and Major General Vadim Makarevskii. 22 According to a former IMEMO department head, civilian researchers during his time were denied access to Soviet military data and were limited to discussing only foreign weapons systems. They also produced studies for the leadership solely on request and were typically instructed to stick to factual matters and refrain from offering recommendations. See Igor S. Glagolev, "The Soviet Decisionmaking Process in Arms Control Negotiations," Orbis, Winter 1978, pp. 769-770. 23 For three notable examples, see Vitaly Shlykov, "The Armor is Strong: Tank Asymmetries and Real Security," Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn, no. 11 (November 1988); Gennady Lednev, "A Formalization of the Notion of Counterforce Weapons as Applied to Strategic Offensive Arms," APN Military Bulletin (Moscow), no. 16 (August 1988), and A. Arbatov and A. Savelyev, "The Control and Communications System as a Factor of Strategic Stability," Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodye otnosheniia, no. 12 (December 1987). 24 See, in particular, two important articles on recent Soviet military doctrinal developments by Aleksandr Savelyev of IMEMO, "The Debate on Warsaw Pact Military Doctrine in the USSR and Socialist Pluralism," APN Military Bulletin, no. 10 (May 1988), 5-8, and "Averting War and Deterrence: The Approaches of the Warsaw Pact and NATO," Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, no. 6 (June 1989). See also the withering critique of a long list of hardline Soviet military writings on warfighting and victory by A. I. Bulanov and L A . Krylova, "The Relationship Between Politics and Nuclear War (A Review of the Literature, 1955-1987)," Voprosyfilosofii,no. 5 (May 1988). 25 When I was in Moscow in December 1989, the institute's deputy director,

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Andrei Kokoshin, remarked to me that he was making a determined effort to hire new staff members with quantitative and technical backgrounds and that he had recently brought aboard several appropriately trained scientists and engineers. In his effort to improve existing "methods for qualitative-quantitative comparison of the effectiveness of various military organisms and types," Larionov concedes that his approach "does not lessen the predominant role of political and strategic decisions." Yet he proceeds to develop what he calls "coefficients of combat comparability" to allow a properly weighted assessment of the many East-West military asymmetries "on an equitable basis." Clearly he is not engaged in a detached academic exercise, but rather in a serious effort to provide useful support to ongoing Soviet force reduction planning. See Major General V. V. Larionov, "Problems of Preventing a Conventional War in Europe," Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodniye otnosheniia, no. 7 (July 1989), 31-43. The current involvement in rudimentary modeling by IMEMO and the USA Institute can be traced back at least three or four years to a crude strategic exchange model appended to a prominent report on strategic stability in which Andrei Kokoshin, Alexei Arbatov, and other civilian defense commentators were involved. Interview in Moscow with Vladimir Shustov of the MFA's Scientific Coordination Center by Claire Mitchell of The RAND Corporation, January 1989. Academician Nikita Moiseyev, "Both Calculations and Common Sense," Moscow News, July 9, 1989, p. 7. In conversations with my colleague John Hines in Moscow in December 1989, members of the VNIISI staff referred disdainfully to the social science analysts as "journalists." They also voiced mild resentment at the disproportionate visibility the latter had come to acquire under Gorbachev and felt that it was they themselves who were the true "professionals" in the scientific assessment of military power. See, for example, V. Tsygichko, "An Evaluation of the Strategic Balance in Europe," APN Military Bulletin (Moscow), no. 12 (June 1988), 6-11. V. Zhurkin, S. Karaganov, and A. Kortunov, "Reasonable Sufficiency - Or How to Break the Vicious Circle," New Times (Moscow), October 12, 1987, pp. 13-15 (emphasis added). For example, shortly before Gorbachev's unilateral troop cut announcement, a prominent economist noted how the USSR had sustained considerable selfinflicted damage "by the priority given to the military principle." This writer pointed out that in attempting to repeat everything the United States did in force development, "in a number of cases, we not only 'repeated' but actually moved ahead - as we did, for instance, in tanks." S. Blagovolin, "The Strength and Impotence of Military Power: Is an Armed Clash Between East and West Realistic in Our Time?" Izvestiia, November 18, 1988. General Ivan Tretyak, "Reliable Defense First and Foremost," Moscow News, no. 8 (February 28-March 6,1988). A fuller review of the civilian arguments for unilateral force reductions and the military's reply to them is offered in Harry Gelman, The Soviet Military Leadership and the Question of Soviet Deployment Retreats, The RAND Corporation, R-3664-AF, November 1988, pp. 11-26. Abridged transcript of a discussion of members of the Public Commission on

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Disarmament Problems of the Soviet Peace Committee, xx Vek i mir, no. 12 (December 1987), 2-9. Gary Lee, "Sakharov Calls on Kremlin to Halt Draft, Cut Military Spending," Washington Post, November 16, 1988. See Sally W. Stoecker, "Soviet Writers Begin to Clarify 'Defensive Defense,'" International Defense Review, October 1988, p. 1,244. According to an informed account in early 1988, Yazov was said to be conducting "a delicate juggling act" in seeking to "reconcile a conservative generation of Soviet war veterans and those Soviets who want to extend Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reform program to the military." See Gary Lee, "Yazov's Delicate Job: Blending Reforms and Military," New York Times, March 16, 1988. Although it has become increasingly clear since then that Yazov's first loyalties are to the military profession, this remains an apt characterization of his stewardship at the Defense Ministry. As then-deputy chief of the MPA, Colonel General D. Volkogonov expressed this sentiment shortly after the Cessna episode: "The current renovation in the army and navy is not a smooth process . . . We felt this with particular acuteness after the violation of Soviet airspace by the West German pilot. The plane was spotted when it was only approaching the Soviet border and, technically, it was quite easy to cut the flight short. But because of carelessness, irresponsibility, and indecision on the part of some officers at all levels, everything happened as it did." "The Army of a New World," Asia and Africa Today, no. 1 (January 1988), 20-25. Also see Rose E. Gottemoeller, Conflict and Consensus in the Soviet Armed Forces, The RAND Corporation, R-3759-AF, October 1989, especially pp. 9-21. Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, "The Doctrine of Averting War and Defending Peace and Socialism," World Marxist Review, no. 12 (1987), 43. "In the State's Interests," Krasnaia zvezda, December 15, 1988. For discussion, see Jeremy Azrael, The Soviet Civilian Leadership and the Military High Command, 1976-1986, The RAND Corporation, R-3521-AF, June 1987. Aleksandr Prokhanov, "Defense Consciousness and the New Thinking," Literaturnaia Rossiya, May 6, 1988, pp. 4-5. Interview with Colonel General M. Gareyev, "The Armed Forces in Conditions of Openness," Argumenty ifakty, no. 39 (September 24-30, 1988), 4-5. Such a reaction was exemplified in a remark by the ground forces commander, General Varennikov, that although the High Command was "grateful to those who, sincerely wishing to help, put forward constructive criticisms" of the military, "concern is caused by instances of the tendentious presentation of certain materials in the mass media, which leads to the growth of a negative attitude toward service in the armed forces among young people." Army General V. Varennikov, "Our Army Has One Honorable Function," Krasnaia zvezda, June 15, 1989. Major General Yu. Lebedev and A. Podberezkin, "Military Doctrine and International Security," Kommunist, no. 13 (September 1988), 110-119. Speech at the USSR Congress of People's Deputies, Moscow television service, June 6, 1989.

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48 Colonels V. Dvorkhin and V. Torbin, "On Real Sufficiency of Defense: Military Specialists' Point of View," Moscow News, no. 26 (June 25, 1989). This article was written as a reply to Radomir Bogdanov and Andrei Kortunov, "Minimum Deterrent: Utopia or Real Prospect?" Moscow News, no. 23 (1989). 49 See "Soviet to Trim Military Production by 1990 - Akhromeyev," Soviet Aerospace, July 24, 1989, p. 1. 50 Army General M. A. Moiseyev, "Once More About the Prestige of the Army," Kommunist vooruzhenykh sil, no. 13 (July 1989), 3-14. 51 Major General Yu. Liubimov, "On Sufficiency of Defense and an Insufficiency of Competence," Kommunist vooruzhenykh sil, no. 16 (July 1989), 21-26. This article was a rejoinder to Alexei Arbatov, "How Much Defense Is Sufficient?" International Affairs, no. 4 (April 1989), 31-44. For amplification, see Stephen M. Meyer and Jeffrey I. Sands, "Soviet Military Doubts Competence of the 'New Thinkers,'" Soviet Defense Notes, Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, November-December 1989, pp. 1-4. 52 Gelman, The Soviet Turn Toward Conventional Force Reduction: The Internal Struggle and the Variables at Play, The RAND Corporation, R-3876-AF, June 1990. 53 Arbatov did reply to Liubimov, however, in a commentary that sought to rise above ad hominem polemics. Alexei Arbatov, "A Conversation to the Point Is More Useful," Kommunist vooruzhenykh sil, no. 22 (November 1989), 17-21. 54 One can imagine a Soviet military feeling about this onslaught of civilian outsiders closely akin to the agitation voiced over two decades ago by a retired USAF Chief of Staff regarding the infusion of Defense Secretary McNamara's "whiz kids" into senior Pentagon slots. See General Thomas D. White, "Strategy and the Defense Intellectuals," Saturday Evening Post, May 4, 1963, pp. 10-12. 55 For amplification on these points, see Bill Keller, "Moscow's Other Mastermind," New York Times Magazine, February 19, 1989, pp. 30-33, 40-43. 56 "Rethinking Victory," Detente, pp. 17-18. 57 These defense intellectuals are having to walk a fine line in seeking to ingratiate themselves to the military while retaining their independence. One can imagine how such remarks by Kokoshin would rankle as much as they would please his military readers. 58 A. Arbatov, "Deep Cuts in Strategic Arms," Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, no. 4 (April 1988), 10-22. 59 Stephen M. Meyer, "Soviet Perspectives on the Paths to Nuclear War," in Graham T. Allison, Albert Carnesale, and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (eds.), Hawks, Doves, and Owls: An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War (New York: Norton, 1985), p. 169. This was an accurate depiction of the institute analysts at the time it was written. The situation has changed dramatically, however, since the arrival of Gorbachev. 60 A well-documented analysis of Gorbachev's strategy in this respect is presented in Alexander Rahr, "Who Is in Charge of the Party Apparatus?" Radio Liberty Research, April 14, 1989, pp. 19-24. 61 This may at least partly explain the origins of a prominent rumor in early 1990 that Gorbachev had resigned as General Secretary of the Communist Party. See Dan Fisher, "Gorbachev Denies He'll Quit as Leader of Party," Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1990.

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62 R. Sagdeyev, "Stars Not Only in the Sky . . . Let's Give Back Academician Sakharov His Awards," Moscow News, no. 29 (July 17, 1988), 8-9. 63 Interview by Captain Second Rank V. Kocherov, "Disarmament and Security," Krasnaia zvezda, December 31, 1988. Also see Yevgeny Velikhov, a vice president of the Academy of Sciences and member of the Central Committee, "A Call for Change," Kommunist, no. 1 (January 1988), 51-53. 64 Quoted in Paul Quinn-Judge, "Soviet Military Faces a New Foe: Criticism," Christian Science Monitor, February 3, 1989. 65 F. Stephen Larrabee, "Gorbachev and the Soviet Military," Foreign Affairs, Summer 1988, p. 1,012. 66 Sergei Zamascikov, "Gorbachev and the Soviet Military," Comparative Strategy, vol. 7(1988), 241. 67 For more on the steady erosion of the military's former monopoly on public discussion of security matters, see Jeffrey Checkel, "Gorbachev's 'New Thinking' and the Formation of Soviet Foreign Policy," Radio Liberty Research, RL 429/88, September 23, 1988. 68 Phillip A. Petersen and Notra Trulock III, "The 'New' Soviet Military Doctrine: Origins and Implications," Strategic Review, Summer 1988, p. 21. 69 Such a decision-making system was first elaborated in Alexander L. George, "The Case for Multiple Advocacy in Making Foreign Policy," American Political Science Review, September 1972, pp. 751-785. 70 A revealing perspective in this regard was offered by a veteran American journalist who visited Moscow in 1988 for an on-the-scenes look at perestroika and its standing in the eyes of the man in the street: "Not even the dissidents are much involved in the reforms. For all they did to draw attention to Soviet abuses, they probably had extremely little influence on Gorbachev - who, my friends agreed, launched his program, and will stop it, for his reasons." George Feifer, "The New God Will Fail," Harper's, October 1988, p. 45. 71 Meyer, International Security, pp. 131 ff. 72 See Thomas E. Anger (ed.), Analysis and National Security Policy (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 1988), p. 105. 73 Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. viii.

10

The other side of the hill: Soviet military foresight and forecasting Jacob Kipp

Few Western analysts have investigated the Soviet military's approach to the problem of foresight and forecasting despite a growing body of Soviet military literature on the topic. Professor John Erickson notes that "Forecasting has become something of a favourite Soviet pastime, indeed more than that, for it has been endowed with a certain ideological rectitude ... 5 > 1 Forecasting (prognozirovanie), which includes highly sophisticated techniques of operations research and systems analysis, in this context, has become a basic tool in the exercise of foresight (predvidenie). And political and military foresight is viewed as a weapon which the skilled commander wields against his opponent. While Soviet authors freely acknowledge all the difficulties associated with foresight in military affairs, admitting that it is more complex than in other sectors, they still see the skill of forecasting as a key to victory over an opponent. Foresight (military) is the process of cognition of possible changes in the area of military affairs, the determination of the perspectives of its future development. The basis of the science of foresight is knowledge of the objective laws of war, the dialectical-materialist analysis of events transpiring in a given concrete-historical context. 2

Foresight and forecasting have over the last decade become increasingly important because of the accelerating pace of change in military affairs. As General of the Army I. E. Shavrov and Colonel M. I. Galkin observed even in 1977: The contemporary period of military construction is characterized by the unprecedented intensity of the renewal of the means of war, the appearance of qualitatively new types of weapons and equipment, by searches for such forms and means of strategic, operational and tactical action, which have never been employed by a single army of the world. New means of the conduct of military actions, new ways of perfecting the organization structure of the armed forces, methods of their combat preparation and raising their combat readiness must be found and theoretically substantiated before they can become the property of military praxis. All this leads to is a sharp rise of the role of military science, which has become the most important factor of the combat might of the armed forces, and scientific troop control is the decisive condition for the achievement of victory.3 248

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The relationship between military science and foresight is explicit. As these authors emphasize, "In its essence, military science is the science of future war."4 However, this "science of future war" has operated within very strict confines. General Staff officers charged with forecasting have confined their advice to the Party-government leadership to military-technical issues, while deferring to Party guidance for political forecasts. At the same time, secrecy has kept the circle of military forecasters small and has precluded dissemination of information about Soviet forces and equipment. Civilians, outside the party-state leadership, were not in a position to comment on or critique the General Staff's military-technical forecasts. There has been, however, a marked shift in the substance of Soviet military foresight since 1984, when the Soviet government reorganized its research effort in military science and national security.5 The significance of changes in military foresight and forecasting have become clearer since the 27th Party Congress. They reflect Gorbachev's "new thinking" towards war prevention, reasonable sufficient defense, and toward a defensive military doctrine. Current changes in military forecasting can best be evaluated against the backdrop of the development of Soviet military science, which is now in the process of addressing such issues as: the content of the initial period of a future war; the role of advanced conventional weapons in modern tactical combat and operations; the area, length; and decisiveness of a future war in defense of socialism; the role of space as a theater of military actions; and the implications for force structure and war economy of a new revolution in military affairs, associated with advanced conventional weapons and weapons based on new physical principles. The ideology of Soviet military forecasting To appreciate the dilemma confronting Soviet military forecasting in the current era of restructuring, one should begin with the central role Marxism-Leninism has had in shaping the "worldview" of Soviet military theorists and forecasters. As V. K. Konoplev asserted, "Marxism as a science of society is the theoretical and methodological basis of truly scientific, social forecasting."6 Marxism-Leninism and its commitment to change the world form the prism through which trends are filtered and analyzed.7 It is not enough to understand trends. They must be shifted in favor of socialism. Basic concepts, such as "correlation of forces," presume the notion of dynamism, change, and the requirement to direct those processes. The Marxist-Leninist approach to systems analysis has been quite explicit in its critique of Western methods which do not have a coherent, conscious ideological position:

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One of the basic deficiencies of all variants of bourgeois system theories ..., especially those based on general systems theory, it is said, is that they cannot explain changes in social systems, where intersocietal or international; they cannot point out a basic factor that motivates the changes and they cannot discover the mechanism of the changes.8 There are several key differences in Soviet and Western approaches to foresight. The first difference is the central and conscious role of ideology in shaping the Soviet vision of the future. Under the guidance of the Communist Party, Marxist-Leninist ideology tolerates no contradiction between "objectivity" and partisanship (partiinost'). Indeed, it proclaims that only a declaration of partisanship to the cause of socialism and to the working class will guarantee the forecaster's objectivity, whether he be a party apparatchik or a military commander. A second critical difference is the emphasis upon dialectical materialism. Marxist-Leninist philosophy posits the existence of a reality whose essence flows from matter, not idea. The point of departure, then, is philosophical materialism, which defines the nature of the objective world in general and the relationship of human society to that world in particular. As an integral part of the overall unifying vision, the notion of the dialectic stresses both cohesiveness and constant change. All phenomena are interconnected, and all are interdependent. Moreover, phenomena interact as parts of a totality, changing along lines of progression and reaction to progression which give rise to still more contending lines of progression. It is this contention, or "inter-penetration of opposites," that Marxist-Leninists label the dialectic. This vision of changing reality establishes the intellectual perspective from which various aspects of the physical and social world are to be understood. Empirical data, that is, information derived from the senses, can be correctly interpreted only within the context of the interrelationships flowing from dialectical materialism. For example, the future development of the military can be understood only within the context of trends (or contending lines of progression) affecting economic, social, political, scientific, and technical developments in general and within the two competing world social systems (capitalism and socialism) in particular. These two systems are in turn dominated by the nature of their class relations, which both shape each system's consciousness and mold its institutions. By extension into the realm of the military, dialectical materialism serves as the conceptual basis for a system of laws of military science, which find their expression in Marxist-Leninist teachings about war and the army.9 One of the more basic assumptions engendered in the application of dialectics to the problem of modern war since Lenin has been the idea that war is a continuation of politics, i.e., class politics, by other, i.e., violent,

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means. This Marxist-Leninist reinterpretation of Clausewitz's dictum to fit the age of imperialism and total war has armed Soviet forecasters with the foundations for a secular theory of just war. Class struggle can assume the form of overt conflict a la a systemic war between capitalism and socialism. Or, as is more probable, class struggle can assume the form of overt and/or covert conflict in political-ideological struggle and/or local wars either of national liberation or protection of a socialist state from internal counter-revolution and capitalist intervention. Within this general scheme, defense of the Soviet Union and the Socialist Commonwealth remains the fundamental mission of the Soviet and Warsaw Treaty Forces. Conceptions of warfighting capabilities thus have gone hand-in-hand with a political strategy designed to enhance the security of the socialist commonwealth, undermine NATO solidarity, neutralize the political will of some NATO members, and avoid the onset of hostilities. The Soviet military forecaster has had prudently to balance his attention between that which is potentially more decisive and that which is more probable, the latter category including conflict in the Third World. At the same time he has had to consider the possibilities of such conflicts growing over into direct superpower confrontations and the accompanying risk of escalation to a world war. 10 For the Soviet military forecaster, as for any forecaster operating with reference to Marxism-Leninism, there are three specific "laws" of the dialectic which must be applied to any exercise in foresight.11 Foresight is not prediction (predskazenie), for prediction implies a determined outcome without requiring the subject to take any action. Foresight, on the contrary, is a tool used by the subject to act upon the objective world. "The capacity to engage in foresight is the most important quality of military cadres." 12 Yet, foresight is difficult when random events abound and when the commander constantly faces inadequate information about the enemy, as well as his forces and capabilities. The "laws" of the dialectic do not negate these problems but, rather provide a method for dealing with uncertainties. In a struggle with an adversary who approaches foresight intuitively, these laws are supposed to provide a relative advantage. Applying these laws is accomplished through concrete historical analysis. The process is akin to the etudes (etiudy) of a chess master, who uses such exercises to sharpen his ability to see five and more moves in advance in order to link together his opening moves, middle, and end game into a complete whole. 13 The first of the laws of the dialectic concerns the law of the unity and struggle of opposites, which embraces the very causes of change and development. In military affairs, this law is expressed in the constant interaction between attack and defense.14 The tension between naval

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artillery and armor would be a familiar example of this law at work, as would be the current struggles between tanks and PGMs, and strategic offense and defense. The law is expressed in the Soviet approach to different forms of conflict. Thus, in the early 1930s leading Soviet military theorists-practitioners, including A. S. Bubnov, S. S. Kamanev, M. N. Tukhachevsky, and R. P. Eideman, explored the relationship between guerrilla and conventional warfare as burning issues of military theory: Partisan warfare during the Civil War often assumed a completely independent significance. One can count on the fact that warfare of such a type in future European class wars and in the national-liberation wars of the nations of the East will become the perfect fellow-traveler of regular warfare. Because of this one of the immediate tasks for theoretical work of our military-scientific theory is: the study of the nature of modern "partisan warfare" and the establishment of a forecast for the future.15 These authors, noting the utility of partisan detachments during the Russian Civil War, had concluded that a combination of offensive operations, revolutionary war aims, and partisan operations would bring victory in future war. This interest in partisan warfare did not remain idle intellectual speculation, but during the 1930s was closely tied to the study of the local wars of the period, including the Italo-Ethiopian War, Spanish Civil War, and the Sino-Japanese War. Thus, during the Sino-Japanese War, in which Soviet officers served as advisors to the Chinese forces, the application of guerrilla tactics by the 8th Route Army of the Chinese Communist Party, merited serious attention. 16 The second law of the dialectic is that of quantitative to qualitative change. This law attempts to describe the effect of a series of incremental (quantitative) changes gradually accumulating to cause a sudden (qualitative) breakthrough. This law warns the Soviet analyst to avoid extrapolating trends and directs him instead to look for points at which sufficient quantity will bring about a qualitative shift. Or to put matters bluntly in relation to military technology, a few tanks do not make for a mechanized warfare, nor a few space-based assets create a space theater of military actions. The Soviet forecaster must look for those developments which promise qualitative leaps and which indicate when they might be expected. This is one area in which mathematical methods (operations research) have been applied since the late 1950s.17 The third law of the dialectic is the "negation of the negation." Development never proceeds in a straight line. One trend (thesis) is dominant, leading to a counter-trend (antithesis) which negates the first and which leads in turn to a final "negation of the negation" or a new trend (synthesis).18 Accordingly, rifled weapons radically transformed infantry tactics and negated smoothbore muskets and field guns. However, break-

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throughs in technology led to a range of rocket weapons, which, in turn, replaced rifled weapons in a number of combat arms. No weapons system or combat arm is ever seen as decisive but is, instead, viewed as but one more aspect within the interconnected process (or continuum) of military development. In 1982, Marshal N. V. Ogarkov, then-Chief of the Soviet General Staff, applied the "law of the negation of the negation" to his analysis of current trends in the development of military art and to the force structure of the Soviet military. He identified this process at work in the development of aerial anti-tank weapons. 19 Another critical element of the Marxist-Leninist approach to foresight is the strict canon that while theory must guide praxis, i.e. practical application, such application can and must guide theory. As Major General V. K. Konoplev observed, "praxis [praktika] is not only the basis but also its motive force of foresight." Since the evaluation of all praxis must by its nature involve historical research, the emphasis is upon a method to find and analyze past phenomena in search of trends - but inside an existing theory. The theory can and must be adapted to new circumstances, and it cannot be consigned to an irrelevant role. Under military praxis Konoplev lists: "the production of weapons and equipment, combat and political preparation, training and education of military personnel and finally, what is the main element - armed struggle." 20 In this attention to the unity of theory and praxis lies one of the critical factors which Soviet forecasters claim makes their method truly scientific. Yet the process of infusing Marxist-Leninist ideology into Soviet military science has itself been a political process with its distinct causes and consequences. Future war in the age of the nuclear-rocket revolution This vision of modern war as dominated by mass, mechanized forces held sway within the Soviet General Staff until the 1950s, when nuclear weapons and modern delivery systems, i.e., ballistic missiles, seemed to negate time-proven perceptions and processes. After Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviets found themselves standing military art on its head in assessing a military-scientific revolution which was having an immediate and profound impact at the strategic level. Tactics, which had been the keystone of operational art, seemed to give way to the strategic implications of massed, nuclear strikes. This emphasis upon nuclear warfighting was the basic line taken by the initial (1962) edition of Marshal V. D. Sokolovsky's Military Strategy.21 Nuclear-rocket weapons not only led to the emergence of new branches of the armed forces but also recast the content and significance of certain basic analytical categories of military science and art. These included concentrating forces in the decisive direction, economy of force,

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partial victory, strategic deployment, the strategic offensive, strategic defense, and strategic maneuver. In 1964, Major General S. Kozlov saw these changes from the perspective of military foresight and forecasting: Soviet military science has discerned all these new phenomena of armed struggle. It has defined the essence of the deeply revolutionary processes, which are taking place in military affairs; it has researched and evaluated the conditions under which they inevitably appear. As a result, it has been able to give a coherent, scientifically-based concept of the character of modern war, which is, as opposed to what happened in the past, based not so much on the experience of past wars, as on scientific foresight and a forecast of a possible future.22 Explicit in his analysis of the dominant combat arms in a "nuclear-rocket war" was a vision of armed conflict which either negated the significance of past combat experience or rendered it largely irrelevant under the new conditions. 23 During the 1960s, the single-minded emphasis on nuclear war as the single category of future war was the subject of intense ferment within the Soviet military. It explained, in part, why Sokolovsky's Military Strategy went through three editions in six years. This emphasis served as the justification for Khrushchev's manpower reductions of the early 1960s and called into question the long-established hegemony of the ground forces within the Soviet military. Critics within the military, while recognizing the centrality of nuclear weapons, wondered if other forms of conflict were not more likely. Some of the ferment was probably also the result of NATO's shift to "flexible response" as an alternative to massive retaliation.24 In this period Soviet tank and motorized infantry were reshaped to fight on a conventional battle field under the constant threat of the use of nuclear weapons. At the same time, the Soviet debate was also driven by the need to reassess the impact of nuclear weapons on "future war." On the one hand, the growth and modernization of the superpowers' arsenals in less than two decades created a situation which made the mass use of such weapons unlikely. On the other hand, simultaneous conventional modernization, including the development of precision guided munitions, which had a destruction power corresponding to small nuclear weapons, again raised the prospect of fighting a relatively protracted conventional war. 25 The reversion to a conventional theater-strategic option during the last decade should be understood as a true "negation of the negation." As Colonel General M. A. Gareev has noted, revitalizing such categories as massing of forces and means on the main direction, as strategic deployment, and as mobilization has infused them with a new content. Within this process of revitalization we can discern two conflicting sources

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of praxis which have affected the direction of the development of military art. On the one hand, the scope and scale of theater-strategic operations have made the operations of the Great Patriotic War relevant to a host of problems concerning operational art and troop control. On the other hand, the use of modern conventional weapons systems such as PGMs, airmobile forces, air defense weapons, and electronic warfare in "local wars" has made such conflicts a vital topic for study. 26 As Marshal S. F. Akhromeev, former Chief of the General Staff, has noted, "One must remember that changes in the nature of wars now take place more rapidly and this means that our reaction to these changes, to the demands of Soviet military art and to the structure of the Armed Forces must be more energetic." 27 Soviet and Warsaw Pact military specialists have addressed the problem of adapting forecasting techniques to the process of foresight in military affairs. They use mathematical modeling in weapons development, in force structuring, and in perfecting methods of troop control. 28 In the late 1960s, Marshal Sokolovsky and Major General M. Cherednichenko addressed the problem of evaluating and forecasting the impact of economic and scientific-technical capabilities on weapons development. They made three related points. First, they noted the long R&D lead time of modern weapons systems, which they estimated at 10-15 years. Second, they called attention to the relatively short time span over which new weapons systems were optimally effective, an estimate of 5-7 years. Third, they asserted that forecasting in the strategic realm had to take into account "military, economic, scientific, technical, moral, and political factors, the stability of a coalition, the relationship of world political forces, the geographic positions of the sides, the degree of vulnerability among the states and their armed forces." 29 Soviet forecasting in the Brezhnev era During the Brezhnev era Soviet national security forecasting developed along a number of mutually interconnected lines. The General Staff's forecasting efforts focused on military-technical questions, including weapons development, force structure, troop control, combat decisionmaking, and reflexive control. At the same time the Soviet leadership fostered the development of research institutions within the Academy of Sciences to provide decision-making support to the Politburo and the state ministries and agencies charged with conducting Soviet foreign policy. These institutes promoted the study of the security policy process in the West. 30 The presence of former General Staff officers, such as Generals Mil'sh-

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tein and Larionov and Colonel Semeiko, in such institutes was a clear manifestation of the military-security component of this effort. Such research institutions as the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada (ISKAN) and the Institute for the Study of the World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) played a major role in foreseeing and shaping the future international environment. In this capacity they soon established contacts with Western forecasting and research centers and studied their efforts in order to improve Soviet political analysis.31 These two lines of Soviet forecasting, one political and concerned with the direction of Western policy, and the other military-technical and concerned with weapons development, force levels, operational concepts, and military art, developed simultaneously along parallel but not intersecting tracks. The Politburo retained its monopoly over all such forecasting information and promoted and tolerated "departmental monopolies" in specific forecasting fields. Soviet civilian analysts thus might have extensive information about Western programs and plans but not about Soviet forces, plans, programs, or even the level of defense spending. On occasion the work of Soviet civilian researchers was brought to the attention of the military experts, as was the case of Genrykh Trofimenko's study of the political constraints operating on US decision-making during the Vietnam era. 32 The context of the publication of his review was the start of a new administration in Washington and the evaluation of the prospects for working out agreements that might structure the superpower competition and lead to a relaxation of tensions. Thus, in the spring of 1969 Voennaia mysi', the theoretical journal of the Soviet General Staff, published a review of the work by Anatoly Gromyko, a leading Soviet researcher on international relations and the son of Andrei Gromyko, then the Soviet Foreign Minister. Gromyko recommended Trofimenko's book in the same breath with that of Marshal Sokolovsky's Military Strategy. Gromyko claimed the work was "definitely . . . of interest to the Soviet military reader, who carefully follows the politics of the world's biggest imperialist power." The central conclusion, which Gromyko emphasized, was the limitation on the use of military power. "The greater the importance acquired by the military potential of the imperialist states, the more difficult it is to apply it as an instrument of foreign policy." This was the central "paradox of the nuclear age." Gromyko for his part carried the analysis further into McNamara's announced theory of "parity" and the concept of "sufficiency" as enunciated by President Nixon. Gromyko charged Soviet researchers with the task of analyzing "the position of those who due to objective circumstances and more flexible thinking recognize the extremely dangerous consequences of the arms race and who would like to slow this process

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somewhat." Such forces were seen as a domestic check upon the US military industrial complex. At the same time, Soviet researchers were still expected to play a leading role in ideological struggle and "expose the American proponents of naked aggression." 33 Soviet military forecasters during this period continued to focus their attention on military-technical questions, especially future Western capabilities and questions of weapons development. They emphasized two crucial methodological approaches. The first prescribed the examination of any weapon as a combat system and simultaneously as a sub-system of a larger combined arms combat system. This approach can be seen in Lieutenant General 1.1. Anureev's writings on missile and space defense.34 Although he based his conclusions upon an analysis of US programs in these areas, he also considered trends in the development of weapons technology, which would transform space into an arena of armed conflict. Anureev used a systems methodology to address the second crucial component of the Soviet approach to forecasting weapons systems development: the examination of trends in the natural sciences which would directly impact upon military affairs.35 He borrowed conclusions drawn from other Soviet forecasters to note an accelerating trend in the volume of scientific-technical information. The R&D cycle of a major weapons system was 10-15 years. During that same period, based upon world statistics on the natural sciences for the three preceding decades, the volume of scientific information would have doubled. Indeed, Anureev noted, "by 1985 it may exceed by fivefold the volume of information existing in 1965." 36 Not surprisingly, Anureev championed mathematical simulations, systems analysis, and Delphi techniques as means of forecasting this complex process and its correlation with military science. Anureev also left guideposts to what he saw as the most crucial areas in future military development. In an article on military science and the natural sciences, Anureev drew attention to the link between military science and quantum mechanics, which he associated with lasers and particle beams, and stated that this connection would "lead to the development of new areas of tactics, operational art and strategy." 37 He also directed his readers attention to the problem of applying advanced scientific-technical means to the development of troop control. 38 It is of some interest that already in 1971 this leading authority on problems of missile and space defense had drawn attention to what he labeled "the project for an American air-space aircraft." In 1975, he went on to author a major Soviet study of the development and potential applications of multi-use space transports or "shuttles." 39 Anureev's conclusions emphasize two final points regarding the applica-

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tion of forecasting techniques to military affairs. Given the increasing pace of scientific-technological development and the accelerating costs associated with the research and development of modern weapons systems, Soviet forecasters have pointed towards the application of mathematical simulations to the problem of abrupt changes.40 At the same time, Soviet forecasters have noted the need to extend the range of their forecasts into the more distant future in order to accommodate the demands of the overall planning process. Drawing upon materials from the 24th Party Congress of 1971, Konoplev pointed to the need for establishing long-range planning of up to 10-15 years in the area of the national economy. Such long-term planning, in turn, would require even longer term forecasts relating to the direction of the development of the national economy in general and to military affairs in particular. His assertions implied a demand to aid decision-makers by pushing forward the frontiers of military forecasting to another generation of weapons beyond those currently under development, i.e., another 10-15 years, and beyond. 41 The scale and complexity of modern weapons systems such as air defense, missile defense, space defense, and automated systems of control have made systems design engineering (sistemotekhnika) essential to planning, design, and elaboration. Systems design engineering addresses both the characteristics of each system's major parts and the laws governing the entire system. Two leading Soviet specialists on systems design engineering have argued that this is particularly the area where the military leadership must adapt to the scientific-technical revolution in military affairs.42 The military forecaster's product could offer limited aid in the making of complex choices among mutually competing claims for resources. In the end the forecaster provided the leadership with a rank order of alternative choices, each with their own costs and benefits. Soviet policy-makers, however, during the Brezhnev era fostered systematic distortions in Soviet military and civilian forecasting and repressed controversial forecasters. E. S. Venttsel', a senior professor at the Zhukovsky Military-Engineering Academy, was openly attacked and lost her position in the 1960s for her novel, At the Tests, a portrait of Soviet military forecasting and cybernetics in the late Stalin era. The work was labeled anti-military and "an evil-smelling caricature of the military and technical intelligentsia, and the officer corps." 43 A decade later when the much-publicized campaign to rationalize the Soviet command economy by means of automated control systems had resulted in serious trouble, Academician V. M. Glushkov, one of the most enthusiastic promoters of automated control systems, wrote "we find ourselves somewhere between confusion and a search for scapegoats." 44

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At that time, Irina Venttsel'-Grekova wrote about the needs of Soviet forecasting. It required: "its own ideology . . . its own methodology, if you please its own philosophy." The heart of this philosophy was a badly needed "theory of compromise" to support forecast-aided decisionmaking. The task was to "see that the wolfs are fed and the sheep stay "hole." For Venttsel'-Grekova the enemies were those "Utopians," on the one hand, who believed that automated control systems were the road to a technological paradise and full proof against "mismanagement, improvidence, and simple stupidity," and, on the other hand, muddleheaded managers - she used Saltykov-Shchedrin's term golovotiapy (stupid bunglers) - who insisted upon ham-handed control and acted arbitrarily.45 Recently, in a discussion of this period in Soviet national life, N. N. Moiseev returned to A. A. Bogdanov, the early Bolshevik and philosophical maverick, and his early writings on technology (Vseobshaia organitsionnaia nauka - tektologiia). Moiseev criticized the ossification of the Soviet command system and its "regression" as it became increasingly inflexible and unable to deal with the profound forces of social and economic change at work in the world and fell into stagnation.46 During the Brezhnev era Soviet military forecasters appreciated the accelerating pace of scientific and technological change but did not call into question the ability of the Stalinist command economy to sustain militarytechnical progress in all major areas. The economic imperative, associated with this process, and its military implications were outlined by Lieutenant General M. M. Kir'ian. In 1982, Kir'ian and his fellow authors discussed interconnections among weapons development, force structure, and military art within seven distinct periods: the Civil War, NEP, socialist industrialization, the eve of the Great Patriotic War, the Great Patriotic War, the postwar period, and the era of the scientific-technical revolution in military affairs.47 In his concluding remarks on the scientific-technical revolution, Kir'ian emphasized the accelerating pace of change and innovation, and saw it as a serious challenge, like that associated with the introduction of nuclear-rocket weapons. A new period was in its birth pangs. He observed: The scientific-technical revolution has sharply increased the pace of materialtechnical equipping and rearming of the Soviet Army and Navy. In the course of the last 10-15 years two-three generations of missiles have been replaced; a significant part of the park of aircraft, submarines, surface ships, artillery, tanks, rifle and other arms, combat and special equipment have been renewed. Afifthgeneration of computers has been adopted.48 This observation, coupled with an appreciation of the Soviet approach to foresight and forecasting in military affairs, makes us conscious of the fact that in Soviet eyes a struggle for foresight was underway, a struggle which

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they believed would shape the very nature of the future itself. It was a struggle that took shape under the impact of deteriorating US-Soviet relations and increased sense of threat. It is possible with complete confidence to affirm that in the future in accordance with the growth of the economic potential of the country and the acceleration of scientific and technical progress, ways of perfecting weapons and equipment and all of the changes in force structure and in means of conducting combat will develop in accord with the law-governed patterns and tendencies outlined above. Their deep understanding and correct interpretation in the analysis of the problems of developing military affairs will make possible the successful resolution of the tasks, raised by the theory and praxis of the present.49 The confidence expressed here is a strictly military-technical solution to what were, in fact, increasingly military-political and socio-economic problems. These issues were tied to sustaining broad-based technological innovation and integrated economic and scientific-technical growth to modernize the Soviet economy and increase its military-economic potential. Anureev and his fellow forecasters were Soviet cassandras during the late Brezhnev era. Their warnings regarding the radical implications of an emerging information revolution for the Soviet military and society found only a few sympathetic voices among the military and political leadership. One of these was Marshal N. V. Ogarkov, then Chief of the General Staff. Ogarkov began to speak of a new revolution in military affairs associated with the development of advanced conventional weapons and foresaw the appearance of weapons "based upon new physical principles," which would reshape armed conflict in the next century. In 1982 he warned: "Under these conditions an imperfect restructuring of views and stagnation in the working out and realization of new issues of military construction are fraught with serious consequences." 50 Such trends called into question "the most universal historical achievement of developed socialism," i.e., "the military-strategic parity" between the United States and the Soviet Union. 51 To Ogarkov the new challenge demanded a more innovative approach, reflecting the seriousness of the problem, especially in the face of the US defense build-up. Strengthening Soviet defense capabilities was nothing less than "an objective, vital necessity."52 The economic implications of what Ogarkov described as a new arms race into the next century, when the Soviet economy was running into serious structural problems, were troubling. Ogarkov's persistent efforts to draw attention to the problem seem to have been major factors in his removal from the post of Chief of the General Staff in 1984. General-Colonel M. A. Gareev, a Deputy Chief of the General Staff and the Chief Director of Military Science, associated these trends with a "leap" into military affairs.

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Now we can speak about a turning point in the development of military science and military art. In general, a new qualitative leap in the development of military affairs, connected with the modernization of nuclear weapons and especially the appearance of new types of conventional weapons, is ripening. In connection with this [process] there has arisen the need to rethink the basic military-political and operational-strategic problems of the defense of the socialist Fatherland.53 Gareev's call for a military-political response to this technological revolution represented a sharp break with the Brezhnev era and was a harbinger of things to come. The Soviet political leadership during the period of stagnation and the post-Brezhnev interregnum had been slow to respond to this systemic challenge. This failure to take timely and vigorous actions in a society, supposedly dominated by long-range, rational, central planning, revealed glaring flaws in the edifice of mature socialism. N . N . Moiseev, former head of the Academy of Sciences Computing Center and a leader in Soviet military simulation work, has observed that ideological dogmatism, careerism, and bureaucratic inertia precluded a timely and effective response to this pressing challenge. The command system which had worked during the Stalin industrialization, the Great Patriotic War, and even the nuclear and space challenges, would not meet this new challenge. 54 In the area of military and foreign policy forecasting this same situation applied, as Foreign Minister Shevardnadze made clear to a meeting of foreign policy experts in July 1988: Any carelessness in the military sphere, which in the past was devoid of democratic control, can in the context of acute mistrust and universal suspicion, cost the country a great deal and have the most severe economic side effects . . . Many losses of this kind could have been averted if interpretation of national security interests had not become the exclusive province of several departments, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs included, which, moreover, were shielded from criticism, as was the case in the past.55 Forecasting in an era of restructuring There has been an important development in Soviet military forecasting since the 27th Party Congress. A collaborative arrangement has emerged among Soviet social scientists and military experts in reshaping military doctrine and in promoting Soviet foreign policy and international security objectives. This effort embraces Mikhail Gorbachev's "new thinking" in international affairs, including denuclearization by the year 2000, war prevention, "reasonable sufficient defense," and an integrated, global security system. 56 Looking back upon Soviet military foresight during the Brezhnev era,

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recent commentators have stressed the failure to consider the political context. Indeed, A. A. Babakov has described the entire period, 1972-86, as "the construction of the Armed Forces of the USSR under conditions of maintaining strategic parity," dominated by an arms race in which, according to the author, the Soviet Union followed the principle of "action - counter-action" (deistvie - protivodeistvie).57 In April 1987, A. N. Yakovlev, then Head of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU and later a Full Member of the Politburo in charge of international affairs, urged Soviet political scientists to contribute to the "formulation of a security system" based on mutual trust to replace nuclear deterrence and military means in general. Yakovlev stated: The formulation of a universal system of international security presupposes the development of a preventive diplomacy, which is called forth to prevent the escalation of conflicts. These questions demand close scientific research.58 In a slightly different version of the same talk published in Kommunist, the Party's leading theoretical journal, Yakovlev formulated two additional tasks in the field of international security policy for Soviet social scientists. First, he asked them to address "the conception of sufficiency of military potentials including that under conditions of the complete liquidation of nuclear weapons." Second, he charged them to work jointly with military specialists on "our military doctrine, which in its strategic content is based upon the policy of averting nuclear war."59 This political component to security issues has shown itself repeatedly in Soviet policy since 1986 - at the Stockholm Conference, over the INF Treaty, in the Warsaw Treaty Organization's proclamation of a defensive military doctrine, and in Gorbachev's announcement of unilateral reductions of conventional forces and withdrawals from Eastern Europe. It has, however, also emerged as an integral part of a new interdisciplinary approach to foresight as it can be applied to creating a military doctrine based upon "defensive defense" in a post-nuclear security system. A. A. Kokoshin of the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, a civilian scholar who has been in the forefront of such civil-military collaboration, described the discipline in these terms: One of the immediate tasks, which today stands before military-political science [voenno-politicheskaia nauka], is this working out of the conditions of securing military-strategic stability in a non-nuclear world and in the stages of movement toward that [condition], the search for the limits of a reasonable sufficiency of military potentials, which could be determined on a mutual basis or unilaterally.60 Recently, Soviet civilian analysts from the various institutes of the Soviet Academy of Sciences - who in the past were excluded from discussing

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Soviet military policy, denied access to Soviet military data, and were permitted only to comment on the political implications of Western programs and policies - have begun to examine the political-military implications of Soviet decision-making. One group of authors recently critiqued the decision to deploy SS-20 missiles, NATO's response, and the negotiating process which brought about the 1987 INF Treaty as purely military-technical responses to security problems. While these authors disagree about whether the initial decision to deploy was a mistake, they do not question the acquisition of the missiles themselves. Rather, they present procurement as a calculated move to counter US strategic modernization after SALT I, especially the process of MIRVing US ICBMs and SLBMs, and the anticipated deployment of new US theater-nuclear systems. Some of the authors question the timing of the SS-20s' deployment in Europe and the failure to take into account the political costs of that move. Furthermore, they are agreed that the decision to break off the INF negotiations in 1983 was a terrible mistake because it isolated the USSR, undercut its international position, and set back the Soviet program to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons. 61 These authors treat the Soviet response as narrow and exclusively military-technical, failing to consider any of the political dimensions of the question. Lev Semeiko, a senior researcher at the IMEMO and a former officer with an expertise in military foresight has written: The conclusion from this is evident: a political approach to military confrontation is more rational than a military-technical [approach]. Precisely by timely political measures one can and must prevent the jumps in the arms race and at the same time reduce the level of military confrontation to such a degree so that both sides feel themselves really secure. The optimal variant is not a one-sided gamble on political measures. 62

Semeiko has outlined the Soviet military-political approach to new circumstances by stressing the interdependence of the process of denuclearization of deterrence and the reduction of conventional forces to such a level so that neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact would be threatened by surprise attack with massive conventional forces.63 Soviet analysts have begun to recast their concept of victory, questioning the congruence of military means and political ends as well as the application of class analysis to the problems of nuclear war. In February 1987 Gorbachev himself questioned one verity of Soviet military doctrine when he was observed: "After Hiroshima and Nagasaki world war ceased to be a continuation of politics by other means." 64 Soviet writers have debated the relevance of Lenin's interpretation of Clausewitz's dictum on "war as a continuation of politics by other, i.e., violent means." In their articles, class struggle remains the central

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manifestation of politics. Recourse to war as a capitalist-imperialist response to the challenges of socialism and national liberation is still accepted as the greatest, although not the only, source of war in the modern world. 65 What has changed is the Soviet perception of the ''rationality" of world war in the nuclear-space era. In D. Proektor's view, world war leads to nuclear war and this, in turn, evokes the specter of "ecological catastrophe" and the end of civilization.66 Some prominent Soviet authors reject strategic "victory" as a term appropriate to war termination in a global, nuclear war. Although glasnost has facilitated the expression of such "new thinking," these authors have been accused of ideological deviation. Hand-in-hand with reconsidering the meaning of the concept of victory has been a reexamination of the nature of the external threat. Civilian authors have been explicit about its scope and character. They now recognize that threat perception is fundamentally a subjective process, sometimes flowing from "specific and sometimes prejudiced and distorted notions about its [the opposing side's] intentions and goals." They now admit that ideological and political stereotyping shaped both sides5 perceptions throughout the cold war. At the same time they note that in the last Brezhnev years and during the interregnum following his death the USSR became especially vulnerable to a renewed US challenge under the Reagan administration. This challenge, which was much more strident in word than deed, brought to a head the need for a break with "the faulty practice of spontaneous reflexive reactions in the military-political sphere," i.e., to mount a Soviet military-technical counter-action to every US action. 67 This approach had no prospect of success without a profound shift in the definition of threat. Soviet civilian authors now emphasize the current, relative invulnerability of the USSR to overt military pressure - excluding, of course, recourse to nuclear means with its risk of vast destruction. They stress the freedom of maneuver which the Soviet Union now enjoys in domestic and international policy. While the political-ideological struggle with capitalism continues under many guises, the recourse to military power is not the best means to resolve such issues. Today in relations between East and West there is not a single conflict for the sake of whose solution there would appear the temptation to resort to war. Remaining on the grounds of common sense, it is difficult to imagine what purpose would be served for Western armies to invade the territory of Socialist states. The problems of modern capitalism are great and quite unhealthy. But these problems - the problems of capitalism at the end of the 20th-century - cannot, in principle, be resolved with the help of military aggression against socialism. This is one of the main reasons why there are today neither in Western Europe nor in the USA influential political forcers which would place before themselves such tasks.68

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These authors stress the sufficiency of current Soviet defense capabilities to repulse an attack. However, they also emphasize the decline in long-term strategic nuclear stability, given the pace of strategic weapons development, the very size of the two arsenals, and the increasing probability of proliferation. They call attention to current US efforts to shift the military competition from warfighting capabilities into the military-economic realm, where competition would mean arms racing through competitive R&D in which the US is at an advantage. Soviet analysts acknowledge sufficiency in both conventional and strategic nuclear arms but anticipate problems unless the Soviet economy achieves greater productivity and a higher pace of scientific-technical innovation. They envision this arms race policy as the keystone of a US program of "competitive strategies," which they describe: as the US Defense Department's strategy of forcing the Soviet Union into an intensive arms race on a maximum number of directions. By using the leading position of the US in a scientific-technical field, they are counting on continually and purposefully devaluing Soviet military assets ("to bring into obsolescence Soviet investments in defense which have already been made") and forcing the USSR to expend new resources and then once again devaluing them.69 To counter this US program they have recommended a search for "low tech/low cost" fixes in the face of "high tech/high cost" challenges. This fear of US economic manipulation has emerged at a time when the Soviet leadership must confront a deep crisis in the command economy. Anxieties have been raised about the economy's ability to carry the USSR into the information age. This criticism, which is the very heart of Gorbachev's perestroika, has stimulated a host of reforms designed to increase the role of markets, enhance individual initiative, expand the role of enterprises, and encourage technological innovation. It has questioned the existing arrangement between the Soviet war economy (voennaia ekonomika), as it has existed since Stalin's industrialization, and the rest of the national economy, which has been sacrificed to serve the former at the expense of consumer demands. The implications of these developments for military forecasting are significant. One of the most important developments has been the call for an end to the mask of secrecy covering Soviet military affairs and the greater dissemination of information about the Soviet military. Alexei Arbatov of IMEMO has tied this requirement to glasnost, democratization, and perestroika, especially economic and foreign policy concerns: Perestroika in this area most obviously restored organic unity and an optimum relationship between Soviet military potential and our economic potential and foreign policy interests. Both the economy and foreign policy of the Soviet Union

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are undergoing an in-depth perestroika which military policy should contribute to and not hamper. The country's defenses must certainly not be impaired in the process. Thus there is a need to take a fresh look at established directive principles and narrow departmental approaches and bring military theory and practice into greater harmony with the economic foreign policy and military strategic realities of today. 70

For Arbatov the answer to what would constitute "reasonable sufficient defense" was as much a question of politics and political-economy as a military-technical matter. He warned against those military solutions which promised security at the risk of bankrupting the nation and lamented the "acute deficit of information on our armed forces and military budget" which made such calculations even more difficult. Military forecasting as part of the overall debate about Soviet foreign policy and national development required glasnost and a "broad and constructive debate" in which alternative opinions could be stated. 71 In this context Soviet military forecasters have sought to adapt their methods to new planning techniques, especially program-target planning, which embraces the principles of balance, variability, integration, and validity and which seeks to optimize scientific-technical progress. The Integrated Program of Scientific-Technical Progress of the USSR for the years 1986-2005, which identifies key technologies for priority development, addresses science, technology and production as sub-systems of a single system. Such fields as micro-electronics, automated control systems, robotics, genetic engineering, and nuclear power have been emphasized.72 The Soviet leadership in the last two years has had to convey to the military a pessimistic assessment of the economy's ability to support the on-going scientific-technical revolution in military affairs. This means force reductions, restructuring, and budget cuts with the promise of eventual economic rejuvenation. The key problem for military forecasters has been to escape the old "action-counter-action" mode of analysis and to spotlight the profound changes that now shape military modernization. Soviet military analysts have begun to discuss the application of new methods to force planning and development. The methodology of program-target planning, which they freely acknowledge was taken from US sources, has been applied to the development of the Navy by Soviet naval analysts. This approach has been acknowledged explicitly to be relevant to the entire defense system. The method of program-target planning seeks to work out a balanced approach to military requirements, taking into account "the objective law-governed patterns and mutual connections of armed struggle, politics, and the economy." 73 Forecasting begins by evaluating the state's military-political objectives and offers a prognosis for the development of international relations during

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the forecasting period. This establishes "probable variants of the militarypolitical situation in the period under consideration." It emphasizes an assumed level of political confrontation as a major component of the "threat." This threat environment can be shaped by political as well as military means during the forecasting period. Forecasting considers the threat posing the greatest risk, the most probable risk, the widest range of potential uses, and the actual capabilities. After considering a wide range of alternatives, the forecasters agree upon that variant which most effectively takes into account all these factors. This case Soviet analysts describe as the "base variant." 74 It models force structure and modernization, weighing the changing nature of the threat. It provides an opportunity for revising plans, in light of new military-political influences, new achievements in science and technology or new developments in a potential adversary's armed forces.75 One of the central analytical themes of this study of the Navy was to stress the need for a forecast which coldly examined the economy, while giving equal consideration to the increasing pace of scientific-technical change in military affairs. The authors noted: The most important result of the development of the armed forces in the conditions of scientific-technical progress is the qualitative change of their material-technological base, which open up fundamentally new possibilities of their combat use in modern war.76 They also discuss the Navy's strategic tasks in a future war, beginning with support to friendly forces in a continental theater of military actions (TVD) and including defeating "enemy aero-space attacks," suppressing the enemy's military-economic potential, and destroying groupings of enemy forces. The authors feature the Navy as an "organic component part of the armed forces of the state, mutually-interacting with other branches and types of forces," which helps fulfill "specific strategic goals of the war by means of its combat actions in maritime and oceanic TVDs." 7 7 Soviet forecasting now focuses on a new revolution in military affairs, one which affects both strategic nuclear and conventional forces. Marshal Ogarkov, for his part, has stressed the impact of a new generation of US/NATO weapons and called attention to the contribution of a new generation of conventional weapons to enhanced war-fighting capabilities, which he ascribed to US/NATO military doctrine: The conception proposes the surprise initiation of combat actions simultaneously by the air, naval and ground forces with the extensive use of the latest conventional, high-accuracy means of armed struggle and of reconnaissance-strike complexes at great depth with the objective of inflicting maximum losses on enemy troops, the achievement in the shortest possible time of an overwhelming superiority against him and a subsequent offensive for the seizure of his territory.78

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Such a conception sounds very much like the Soviet's own "deep operations," but there is a difference in the effectiveness attributed to deep interdiction systems and to the possibility of using fire to preempt concentration and deployment of enemy forces. The Soviets believe that such systems might be as combat effective as tactical nuclear weapons.79 The revolution in conventional military affairs, associated with highaccuracy, long-range systems and with automated troop control, has made its own impact on military forecasting. In the Journal of the Ground Forces, Colonel Stanislaw Koziej, one of the Polish Peoples Army's forecasters, envisioned changes in ground force tactics under "the influence of the development and introduction of precision weapons and helicopters on an increasingly broader scale, as well as the rapid tempo of electronization and automation of the basic processes of combat." 80 Colonel Koziej identifies five basic directions of the transformation of ground force tactics: the transformation of traditional ground combat into air-land combat; broadening the role of mobility in all actions of troops; the development and generalization of training of combat actions within enemy formations, especially raiding actions; the initiation of battle at increasingly greater distances; [and] the growth of a significance of the "information struggle," which has as its objective to steer the enemy in the direction of one's own plans and intentions.81 The new hybrid discipline of "military-political science" has developed its own answer to such revolutionary trends as they affect military art. A. A. Kokoshin and General-Lieutenant V. V. Larionov have proposed three alternative military postures in Europe which to some degree would shift the posture from offense to "defensive defense" by a process of gradual negotiations and unilateral actions leading to a de-escalation of military confrontation in Central Europe. 82 At the same time, Kokoshin has proposed using arms control to slow the acquisition of such advanced weapons systems in order to maintain conventional "strategic stability": High-accuracy, long-range weapons, if they were procured in mass, will add additional instability. Their appearance will stimulate the development of new means and methods of armed struggle and make the arms race even more costly.83 Foresight and forecasting here are joined as political and military processes, mutually interconnected and conditioned by the economic realities which the Soviet leadership must face. Just as there is a struggle for the mind of the opposing commander, so too there is a struggle for the future itself, which sees military power as only one of many means (political, economic, social, and ideological) to enhance security. Soviet analysis in the past treated changes in the correlation of forces as a "zero-sum game." Today, Soviet forecasters appear increasingly

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concerned with mutual security. They recognize that socio-political asymmetries have given rise to doctrinal and strategic asymmetries, and that to enhance its own security the Soviet Union must seek a means of overcoming such asymmetries. This process includes arms control, confidencebuilding measures, and unilateral force reductions. It involves the open dissemination of more information about the Soviet military. Militarypolitical foresight and forecasting will take its place alongside militarytechnical forecasting. Both will play decisive roles in the struggle for a new system of international security, transcending confrontation and based upon competitive cooperation. For much of its history, Soviet military forecasting was hamstrung by political and ideological controls and confined to military-technical questions under the assumption of an encircling capitalist threat. From the late 1920s, Soviet military forecasting labored under the burden of Stalinist controls and a fixation on military secrecy carried to absurd lengths. In the 1950s, military forecasting achieved some degree of autonomy on militarytechnical issues and began to apply operations research and cybernetic techniques to the question of future war in the nuclear era. However, it was prevented from addressing political forecasts of the threat environment which remained the right of the Politburo. Nor could it address the systemic implications of accelerating scientific-technical change upon Soviet society, even as it foresaw a new scientific-technical revolution called into question many of the institutions and methods. Driven by declining productivity and innovation, the Soviet leadership under Gorbachev has broken with that past in order to deal with a profound socio-economic crisis at home affecting the welfare and security of the Soviet Union. The emergence of "military-political science" with its explicit collaboration between civilian and military forecasters addressing military-political and militarytechnical questions has made possible a more wide-ranging, public discussion of policy alternatives. While glasnost is not yet Western pluralism and military glasnost may still sound like an oxymoron, the Soviet military forecasting environment has been changed by these debates and discussions. Alternative military establishments, i.e., volunteer forces or a mixed cadre/territorial system, are openly debated in the newly elected Congress of People's Deputies. Marxism-Leninism remains the prism through which Soviet forecasters view the world, but there is much greater emphasis upon interconnections, mutual gains and losses, system maintenance, and feedback loops. There has been greater tolerance of diversity. Where once priests protected the anointed truth of historical inevitability, there is now a place for the jester.84 Given the radical changes in the strategic environment, the mounting

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dislocations in Soviet society, the intense political struggle over the future of the Party, the Union, and the command-economy, and a deepening crisis within the Soviet military itself, it is not surprising that struggle over forecasting has become bitter. It has, in fact, taken on the character of an open political battle, symbolized by the polemics over defense policy between Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, now Gorbachev's Chief National Security Advisor, and Georgii Arbatov, a People's Deputy and the head of the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada. At issue are such questions as the nature of the threats facing the USSR, the level of defense spending, and the efforts of the Ministry of Defense to limit strictly information about the Soviet military. The debate itself has reshaped the very process of assessing Soviet national security. The radicals with ties to civilian forecasters see military reform as an outcome of a sweeping transformation of Soviet society in all aspects, the result of which is a much more decentralized and open society. The reformers associated with the Ministry of Defense see military reform as a culmination of perestroika and as a process which will strengthen the center. 85 The on-going debate over the lessons of "Desert Storm" as high-tech warfare will very likely involve a much broader set of implications than those confined to the impact of new technologies on the battle field. It encompasses the socio-economic context of military modernization, and the political assumptions undergirding the assessment of threat and risk. At a minimum these lessons will contribute to deciding whether to have a professional or conscript army, to defining the requirements for new programs in weapons procurement, and to confirming the prudence of the General Staff's assessment of a major revolution in military affairs associated with automated systems of control, precision-guided munitions, reconnaissance-strike complexes, and electronic warfare.86 All these analyses place increasing demands upon a command economy in profound crisis. Notes 1 John Erickson, "The Soviet Military and the Future or the Future of the Soviet Military - Pre-Conference Paper," in Richard Thomas (ed.), Proceedings of a Conference on: The Soviet Military and the Future (College Station, TX: Center for Strategic Technology, Texas A&M University, 1985), p. 1-1. 2 Voennyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar' (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1983), p. 585. 3 I. E. Shavrov and M. I. Galkin (eds.), Metodologiia voenno-nauchnogo poznaniia (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1977), pp. 3-4. 4 Shavrov and Galkin (eds.), Metodologiia voenno-nauchnogo poznaniia, p. 64. 5 This reorganization is discusssed in: M. A. Ga? eev, Sovetskaia voennaia nauka, in Znanie, no. 11 (November 1988), 25 ff. Such cooperation emerged in full bloom during the Soviet campaign against the Strategic Defense Initiative and

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brought about much closer collaboration among Soviet military experts, social scientists, and natural scientists. V. K. Konoplev, Nauchnoe predvidenie v voennom dele (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1974), p. 32. Konoplev, Nauchnoe predvidenie v voennom dele, p. 127. Julian Lider, Correlation of Forces: An Analysis of Marxist-Leninist Concepts (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), p. 20. V. Morozov and S. Tyushkevich, "On the System of Laws of Military Science and the Principles of Military Art," Voennaia mysl', no. 3 (March 1967), 17. E. Rybkin, "Marksizm-Leninizm kak metodologicheskaia osnova dlia prognozirovanii voennykh sobytii," Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 7 (July 1980), 3-10. The Soviet literature on forecasting is quite extensive. Relevant works on the role of ideology in social, economic, political, scientific, and technological forecasting include: I. V. Bestuzhev-Lada, Okno v budushchee (Moscow: Mysl', 1970); D. M. Gvishiani, "Dialektiko-materialisticheskii fundament sistemnykh issledovanii," in Filosofskie aspekty sistemnykh issledovanii: Trudy filosofskogo metodologicheskogo seminara (Moscow: VNIISI, 1980), pp. 3-8; and D. M. Gvishiani (ed.), Nauchno-tekhnicheskii progress: Programmnyi podkhod (Moscow: Mysl', 1981). Voennyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar' (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1983), p. 585. Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines etude as study or a piece of music for the practice of a point of technique. In Russian etuid (etude) applies to both music and chess. Thus, Triandaflllov gave his essay on tactical aspects of the Perekop-Chongar Operation of 1920 the subtitle of takticheskii etiud (tactical study) thereby making the link between chess and foresight. See: V. Triandaflllov, "Perkopskaia operatsiia (takticheskii etiud)," in A. S. Bubnov, S. S. Kamenev, and R . P . Eideman (eds.), Grazhdjanskaia voina, 1918-1921, three volumes (Moscow: Voenyyi Vestnik, 1928-30), pp. 339-357. Konoplev, Nauchnoe predvidenie v voennom dele, pp. 68-70. A. S. Bubnov, S. S. Kamanev, M. N. Tukhachevsky, and R. I. Eideman (eds.), Grazhdanskaia voina, 1918-1921: Operativo-strategicheskii ocherk boevykh destvii Krasnoi armii (Moscow: Gosizdat, Otdel Voennoi Literatury, 1928-30), p. 18. N. Argunov, "Partizanskaia voina," Voennaia mysl', vol. 3, no. 6, 78-81. S. I. Krupnov, Dialektika i voennaia nauka (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1963), pp. 100-126. I. A. Grudinin, Dialektika i sovremennoe voennoe delo (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1971), pp.6ff. N. V. Ogarkov, Vsegda v gotovnmosti k zashchite otechestva (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1982), pp. 41-45. Konoplev, Nauchnoe predvidenie v voennom dele, pp. 6, 13. V. D. Sokolovsky (ed.), Voennaia strategiia, 1st edn (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1962). S. Kozlov, "K voprosu o razvitrii sovetskoi voennoi nauki posle vtoroi mirovoi voiny," Voennaia mysl', no. 2 (February 1964), 64. Kozlov, "K voprosu o razvitii sovetskoi," p. 65. P. G. Bogdanov, M. A. Mil'stein, and L. S. Semeiko (eds.), SShA: Voennostrategicheskie konseptsii (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1980), pp. 51-52; and S. A.

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Tiushkevich, Filosofiia i voennaia teoriia (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), pp. 182-183. 25 M. A. Gareev, M. V. Frunze-voennyi teoretik (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1985), pp. 239-243. 26 I. Shavrov and M. Galkin (eds.), Lokal'nye voiny: Istoriia i sovremennost' (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1980). For a discussion of this analytical process in action, see Jacob W. Kipp, Naval Art and the Prism of Contemporaneity (College Station, TX: Center for Strategic Technology Stratech Papers, 1984). 27 S. F. Akhromeev, "Rol' Sovetskogo Soiuza i ego Vooruzhennykh Sil v dostizheniia korennogo pereloma vo vtoroi mirovoi voine i ego mezhdunarodnoe znachenie," Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 2 (February, 1984), 24. 28 I. Anureev and A. Tatarchenko, Primenenie matematicheskikh metodov v voennom dele (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1967), pp. 4-5; and Shavrov and Galkin (eds.), Metodologiia voenno-nauchnogo poznaniia, pp. 372-397. 29 V. Sokolovsky and M. Cherednichenko, "Military Strategy and Its Problems," Voennaia mysl', no. 10 (October 1968), 37-41. 30 Carl Jacobsen, "Soviet Think Tanks," in David R. Jones (ed.), Soviet Armed Forces Review Annual (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1977), I (1977), pp. 149-152. 31 A. A. Kokoshin, Prognozirovanie ipolitika: metodologiia, organizatsiia i ispol'zovanie prognozirovaniia mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii vo vneshnei politike SShA (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1975); (with R. G. Bogdanov), SShA: Informatsiia i vneshnaia politika (Moscow: Nauka, 1979); and SShA: Za fasodoi global noi politiki [Vnutrennie faktory formirovaniia vneshnei politiki amerikanskogo imperializma na poroge 80-kh godov] (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1981). 32 G. Trofimenko, Strategiia global'noi voiny (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniia, 1968), pp. 310-320. 33 Anatoly Gromyko, "American Theoreticians between Total War' and Peace," Voennaia my si', no. 4 (1969), 91-98. 34 I. I. Anureev, Oruzhie protivoraketnoi i pritivokosmicheskoi oborony (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1971), pp.259 ff. 35 I . I . Anureev, "The Correlation of Military Science with the Natural Sciences," Voennaia mysl', no. 11 (November 1972), 31-32. 36 Anureev, "Correlation of Military Science with Natural Sciences," p. 34. 37 Anureev, "Correlation of Military Science with Natural Sciences," pp. 34-35. 38 Anureev, "Correlation of Military Science with Natural Sciences," p. 36. 39 Anureev, Oruzhie protivoraketnoi i protivokosmicheskoi oborony, pp. 75-76; and Rakety mnogokratnogo ispol'zovaniia (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1975). For an examination of the ramifications of such developments for the future air and space defense, see Jozef Smoter, "Operation of National Air Defense in a Possible Future War," Przeglad Wojsk Lotnicznych i Obrony Powietrznew Kraju, no. 9 (September 1982), 5-12. 40 Yu V. Chuyev and Yu B. Mikhailov, Forecasting in Military Affairs (Washington, DC: GPO, 1980), pp. 180-193. The original Russian edition was published in 1975. 41 Konoplev, Nauchnoe predvidenie v voennom dele, pp. 57-58. 42 V. V. Druzhinin and D. S. Kontorov, Voprosy sistemotekhniki (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1976) pp. 13-20.

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43 Vladimir Rozanov, "Proza s zapakhom," Molodaia gvardiia, no. 1 (January 1968), 293-295. See also Jacob W. Kipp, From Foresight to Forecasting: The Russian and Soviet Military Experience (College Station: Center for Strategic Technology, Texas A&M University, 1988), pp. 254—258. 44 Liternaturnaia gazeta, no. 5 (1975), 11. 45 I. Grekova, "Metodologicheskie osobonnosti prikladnoi matematiki na sovremennom etape ee razvitiia," Voprosyfilosofii, no. 6 (June 1976), 104—114. 46 Moiseev, Sotsializm i informatika, pp. 120-156. 47 M. M. Kir'ian (ed.), Voenno-tekhnicheskii progress i Vooruzhennye Sily8 SSSR (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1982). 48 Kir'ian, Voenno-technicheskii progress, p. 326. 49 Kir'ian, Voenno-technicheskii progress, p. 324. 50 N. V. Ogarkov, Vsegda v gotovnosti k zashchite otechestva (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1982), p. 31. 51 Yu. Ya. Kirshin et aL, Sovetskiye Vooruzhennyye Sily v usloviyakh razvitogo sotsializma (Moscow: Nauka, 1985), p. 127. 52 N. V. Ogarkov, Istoriya uchit bditel'nosti (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1985), p. 80. 53 M. A. Gareev, M. V. Frunze - voyennyy teoretik (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1985), p.438. 54 N. N. Moiseev, Sotsializm i informatika (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1988), pp. 62 ff. 55 International Affairs, no. 10 (October 1988), 19-21. 56 Kommunisticheskaia Partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza, Materialy xxvn s'ezda Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1986), pp. 20-21, 67, 136, 177. 57 A. A. Babakov, Vooruzhennys Sily SSSR posle voiny (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1987). For a periodization of the development of Soviet ground forces during the same era, see Jacob W. Kipp, "Conventional Force Modernization and the Asymmetries of Military Doctrine: Historical Reflections on Air/Land Battle and the Operational Manoeuvre Group," in Carl B. Jacobsen (ed.), The Uncertain Course: New Weapons, Strategies and Mind-Sets, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 137-166. For an examination of the development of Soviet frontal, army, troop, and air defense aviation in the postwar period, see Jacob W. Kipp, "Soviet Tactical' Aviation in the Postwar Period: Technological Change, Organizational Innovation and Doctrinal Continuity," Airpower Journal, vol. 2, II, no. 1 (Spring 1988), 8-27. 58 A. N. Yakovlev, "Dostizhenie kachestvenno novogo sostoianiia sovetskogo obshchestva i obshchestvennye nauki," Vestnik Akademii Nauk SSSR, no. 6 (June 1987), 76. 59 A. Yakovlev, "Dostizhenie kachestvenno novogo sostoianiia sovetskogo obshchestva i obshchestevennye nauki," Kommunist, no. 8 (May 1986), 18. Two recent works, one by an academic and the other by an officer of the General Staff, have addressed this problem of finding a common methodology for addressing the interweaving and merging of political and military problems in the nuclear space age. See: V. Liashenko, "Net Nichego praktichne khoroshei metodologiik" Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn', no. 1 (January, 1988), p. 107, andM. A. Gareev, "Sovetskaia voennaia nauka" Zashchita rodiny, no. 11 (November 1987).

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60 Kokoshin, "Razvitie voennogo dela i sokrashchenie vooruzhennykh sil i obychnykh vooruzhenii," Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, no. 1 (January, 1988), p. 29. 61 G. M. Sturua,, "Bylo li neobkhodimo razvertyvaniye raket SS-20?" SShA, no. 12 (December, 1988), 23-29; A. E. Bovin, "Inye varianty," SShA, no. 12 (December, 1988), 29-32; L . S . Semeiko, "SS-20: Oshibka, no men'shaya chem mozhno bylo by dumat'," SShA, no. 12 (December, 1988), 32-36; S. A. Karaganov, "Eshche neskol'ko soobrazhenii," SShA, no. 12 (December, 1988), 37-41. 62 Semeiko, "SS-20," p. 36. 63 Krassnaia zvezda, February 21, 1989. 64 Pravda, February 17, 1987. 65 Iu. la. Kirshin, V. M. Popov and R. A. Savushkin, Politicheskoe soderzhanie sovremennykh voin (Moscow: Nauka, 1987). 66 See D. Proektor and A. Utkin, "Evropa i Klausevits," Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 17 (April 26, 1987); B. Kanevsky and P. Shabardin, "K voprosu o sootnoshenii politiki, voiny i raketno-iadernoi katastrofy," Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn', no. 10 (October, 1987), 120-129; N. Grachev, "O raketno-iadernoi voine i ee posledstviiakh," no. 1 (January 1988), 102-105; V. Liashenko, "Net nichego praktichne khoroshei metodologii," Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn1, no. 1 (January, 1988), 105-107; B.Tkachuk and V. Tumalar'ian. "Povod dlia razmyshlenii," Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn'', no. 1 (January, 1988), 108-110; O. Bel'kov, "Pobedit' ne v voine, no voinu," Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn', no. 1 (January 1988), 110-112; A. Dyrin and A. Savinkin, "Polnee uchutyvat' real'nosti iadernogo veka," Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn'', no. 1 (January, 1988), 112-115; and D. Proektor, "O politike, Klausevitse i pobede v iadernoi voine," Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn', no. 4 (April, 1988), 79-85. 67 S. P. Federenko, "Soviet Perception of US Threat," in Karl Jacobsen (ed.), Strategy: USA/USSR (London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 227-234. 68 Federenko, "Soviet Perceptions," p. 44. 69 Federenko, "Soviet Perceptions," pp. 48-49. 70 Alexei Arbatov, "How Much Defense is Sufficient?" International Affairs, no. 4 (April, 1989), 32. 71 Arbatov, "How Much Defense is Sufficient?" pp. 43-44. 72 V. S. Bialkovskaia, Programmno-tselevye metody v razvitii promyshelennosti (Moscow: Ekonomika, 1983), pp. 15-22. On forecasting scientific-technical trends, see A. E. Varshavsky, "Problemy analiza i predvideniia razvitiia osnovykh nauk," Isvestiia Akademii nauk SSSR: Seriia ekonomicheskaia, no. 6, (November-December, 1984), pp. 12-26. 73 N. P. V'iunenko, B. N. Makeev, and V. D. Skugarev, Voenno-morskoiflot: RoV perspektivy razvitiia, ispol'zovaniia (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1988), p. 66. 74 V'iunenko et aL, Voenno-morskoiflot, pp. 66-69. 75 V'iunenko et aL, Voenno-morskoiflot, p. 81. 76 V'iunenko et aL, Voenno-morskoi flot, p. 34. 77 V'iunenko et aL, Voenno-morskoi flot, pp. 35-42. For a recent discussion of trends in the development of submarine tactics, "using the open national and foreign press;" see V. A. Kvoshch, Taktika podvodnykh lodok (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1989).

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78 N. V. Ogarkov, Istoriia uchit bditel'nosti (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1985), p. 69. 79 A. A. Babakov, Vooruzhennye Silly SSSR posle voiny (1945-1986 gg.): Istoriia stroitel'stva (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1987), p. 241. 80 Stanislaw Koziej, "Przewidywane kierunki zmian w taktyce Wojsk Ladowych," Przeglad Wojsk Ladowykh, no. 9 (September, 1986), 9. 81 Koziej, "Przewidywane kierunki zmian w taktyce Wojsk Ladowych." 82 A. A. Kokoshin and V. V. Larionov, "Protivostoianie sil obshchego naznacheniia v kontekste strategicheskoi stabil'nosti," Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, no. 6 (June, 1988). 83 A. A. Kokoshin, "Razvitie voennogo dela i sokrashchenie vorushennykh sil i obychnykh vooruzhenii," Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, no. 1 (January, 1988), p. 29. 84 Leszek Kolakowski, "The Jester and the Priest," in Maria Kunciewicz (ed.), The Modern Polish Mind (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), pp. 301 ff. 85 Jacob W. Kipp, The Future of the Soviet Military: Alternative Outcomes of the Current Crises and Their Implications for International Security (Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Soviet Army Studies Office Paper, 1991). 86 Ibid.

Index

Abdul, Haq, 170 ABM Treaty (1972), 42, 43, 202 and mutual deterrence, 61, 62 and SDI, 65, 66 Academy, of Sciences (USSR), 239, 262-3 Achlov,V.,86 ACMs (advanced conventional munitions), 35 Afghanistan, 5, 7, 20, 117, 157-86 Africa, 4 special operations units, 164 agriculture, destruction of Afghan, 160 air assault brigades, in Afghanistan, 174, 175 air defense, 92-3 Air Defense Forces, 142, 143, 144, 151 airborne, forces, 85-6 in Afghanistan, 163, 174 and the Soviet Navy, 135 aircraft carriers, 130, 131, 132, 135, 139, 141 and the defensive doctrine, 195 Akhromeyev, S. F., 65, 81, 149, 169, 170, 173, 189, 229, 255, 270 and defense policymaking, 220, 229, 232 Albania territorial defense, 116, 117, 118 and the Warsaw Pact, 102, 107, 110 Aleksandrov, Anatoliy, 200 Alexander II, Tsar, 18 Andropov, Y., 64, 68 Angola, 19, 144, 180 Anureev, I. L, 257-8, 260 Arbatov, Alexei, 223, 233-4, 236-7, 265-6 Arbatov, G., 190, 233, 234, 238, 270 arms control as alternative to superpower competition, 48-9 civilian involvement in policymaking, 223, 224, 225, 226-8 Gorbachev's program, 104-6 and the Soviet Navy, 128, 145, 148-50

276

Army, Soviet and Afghanistan, 170-4 and civilian involvement in defense policymaking, 228-35 conscripts, 16, 91-2, 171 marshals, 95 officers, 115, 116, 172-4 riot suppression duty, 95 Arnold, Anthony, 179 ASW (anti-submarine warfare), 132, 137, 141, 144, 145-6 asymmetric response, policy of, 193, 194, 198, 203 Atkeson, 16 Australia, 24 Austria, 107, 117 Austrian State Treaty, 108 Avduevskiy, V.,207, 208 Azerbaijan, 95, 189 Babakov, A. A., 262 BACKFIRE bombers, 136, 141 Baklanov, Oleg, 188 balance of terror Soviet objections to, 67-8 Baldwin, Stanley, 5 ballistic missile submarines, see SSBNs ballistic missiles, 194, 202-3, 253; see also ICBMs Belousov, Igor, 188 Belyakov, Oleg, 189, 220 Berlin Wall, 109 Bismarck, Otto von, 13 Blackjack strategic bomber, 195 BMD lasers, 202 BMP infantry fighting vehicles, 84 Bogdanov, A. A., 259 Bohlen, Charles, 'Chip', 1 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 13, 15, 130 Bovin, Aleksandr, 61 Brezhnev, L., 37, 59, 60, 64, 68, 191, 197, 235

Index and Afghanistan, 170, 171, 173 and defense policymaking, 223-4, 239 Brezhnev Doctrine, 18, 100, 180 Brezhnev era, and military forecasting, 255-61,264 Britain, Royal Navy, 19 Bubnov, A. S., 252 Bulgaria, and the Warsaw Pact, 107 Bykov, Vasil', 189 CAF (Combined Armed Forces), 103 Calleo, David, 110 Canada, 107 Cavour, Count, 18 Cherednichenko, General, 61, 255 Chernavin, V. N . , 128, 140, 194-5 Chernenko, K., 64, 68 China, People's Republic of, 4, 5, 7, 14, 46, 73, 111,172 armed forces, 9, 252 and the Cultural Revolution, 23 Sino-Japanese War, 252 Cholerton (Daily Telegraph correspondent), 1 Churchill, Winston, 1 civilian involvement, in Soviet defense policies, 22, 217-47 Clausewitz, Karl von, 13, 38, 45, 58, 59, 68,251,263 Clemenceau, G., 15 command, control and communications (C3), sites, 30, 33, 134 Committee on Defense and State Security, 220-2 Communist Party Defense Council, 188 Department of Defense Industry, 188 computer technology, 17 conscripts, Soviet, 91-2 in Afghanistan, 171 demographic composition, 16, 91 conventional warfare and guerilla warfare, 252 and the Soviet Navy, 133 conventional weapons, 16, 17, 67, 96 and Soviet nuclear strategy, 34-5 and military forecasting, 255, 267-8 technology, 93-4, 191 cooperative design bureaus, 206 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), 104, 105, 120 Council of Islamic Affairs (Afghanistan), 166 counter-insurgency warfare, in Afghanistan, 161-5, 174-6 counterforce capabilities, American, 62-3

277 counteroffensive actions, Soviet, 85, 86 counteroffensive capability, 121 cruise missiles, 131, 135 CSCE (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe), xiii, 107 Czechoslovakia and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, 100, 101, 120, 122 invasion of (1968), 90, 100, 105, 158, 172 railways, 89 reductions in military equipment, 84 territorial defense, 116 and the Warsaw Pact, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108 defense, mobilization for, 87-91 Defense Council, 188 Defense Ministry, Soviet, 10, 22, 188-9, 206, 219, 222, 239 defense policies, 2 civilian involvement in, 22, 217-47 defensive defense, 151, 192-3 defensive military doctrine, 192-5 attitude of military to, 228-9 and the Soviet Navy, 134, 142-47, 150 and Soviet operational concepts, 84-6 defensive planning, and the Soviet Navy, 144-7 defensive, sufficiency, concept of, 194 Demenov, Alexander, 95 Denmark, 14 Department of Defense Industry, 188 detente, 4 deterrence see also mutual deterrence doctrines of, 2-3 Soviet views, on, 9-10, 12 US doctrine, 11 "war-fighting" approach to, 33 deterrence by denial, 59 deterrence by punishment, 59 Donnelly, Christopher, 31, 176 East Germany see German Democratic Republic Eastern Europe, 4, 7, 17-18; see also individual countries and the Soviet Navy, 20 and the Warsaw Pact, 100-26 economics, military, theory of, 114 economy, Soviet, and military power, 20-1 and military R&D, 203-7 education, military, 114 officers, 115, 116 Eideman, R. P., 252 Eliot, T. S., 106

278

Index

equipment, military, and Soviet nuclear strategy, 32-4 Erickson, John, 248 Erne, Earl of, 13 Estonia, 107, 119, 121 Europe, possible German-centred, 5 European Community, xii-xiii, 104 European security policy, globalization of, 109-10 exercises, and Soviet nuclear strategy, 36-7 Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), 20, 112, 113, 116, 122-3 Fedoseev, A.,201 Feoktistov, K., 197 fertility rates, Soviet, 91 Finland, 50, 107, 117 and the Warsaw Pact, 100, 107 firepower, in Afghanistan, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 168-9 First World War, 15,30 tactical capability, 30 "fleet against fleet" tasks, 143 "fleet against shore" combat, 143 forecasting, military, 248-75 Foreign Affairs, Ministry of, 22, 219, 234, 239, 240 foreign policy, and the Soviet Navy, 148 foresight, military, 248, 251, 259-60, 268 France, and the Royal Navy, 19 Fukuyama, Francis, 38 Galkin, M. I., 248 Gapanov-Grekhov, A., 189 Gareyev, M. A., 150, 192, 231, 254, 260-1 Garthoff, Raymond, 13, 14 Gelman, Harry, 234 generals, in Afghanistan, 172-3 Geneva summit (1985), 66, 68 geography, and Soviet military doctrine, 10 Gerasimov, Gennady, 106 German Democratic Republic, 14, 84, 101, 102, 103, 108-9, 119 and German revanchism, 105, 108 German reunification, 101-2, 107, 108, 119,120 Germany, Federal Republic of, 103, 108, 112, 115,116 glasnost, 8, 37, 218, 222, 228 and military forecasting, 269 and military R&D, 209 Glushko, Valentin, 198 Glushkov, V. M.,258 Gomulka, W., 109 Gorbachev, M., 64, 167 and arms control, 66-7, 103—6

and defense policymaking, 212, 217, 219, 222, 223, 226, 227, 228, 234, 235, 237, 238, 241 and defensive military doctrine, 119 and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, 100-2, 119-20 and the Geneva summit, 66, 68 and the military, 9 military doctrine, 195, 218, 219 and military forecasting, 261-2, 263 and military technology, 94, 198, 208 on naval force reductions, 148-9 and "new thinking" on security, 48, 69-73, 180, 189, 249 and quality of armaments, 198-9, 209 on space weapons, 66 Gorshkov, Sergei, 19, 127, 128, 129-30, 143 Gray, Colin, 13, 14 Great Complication, 5, 6-7 Great Patriotic War, see Second World War Great Simplification, 3, 5, 6 Grechko, Andrei, 61, 129 Grechko's doctrine, 111-12 Grekov,Y. P., 175 Gromov, Boris, 174 Gromyko, Anatoly, 256-7 Ground Forces, 142-3 GRU (Soviet military intelligence), 87 guerilla warfare, 252 Gulf War, 270 Hanson, Philip, 199 helicopters in Afghanistan, 159, 162, 163, 165, 169, 175 R&D, 200, 201 Hilderbrant, David, 140 history, and Soviet nuclear strategy, 31-2 Holloway, David, 191, 201 Holmes, Justice, 14 Hungary, 5 1956 uprising, 109, 172 and the Warsaw Pact, 101, 104, 106, 107 Huntington, Samuel, 241 ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles), 12, 33, 34, 40, 62-3, 141, 146, 187 R&D, 201, 202, 232 IMEMO (Institute of World Economics and International Relations), 225, 235, 239, 256, 263, 265 India, 23 Indian Ocean, 24, 132

Index "indications and warning" (I and W) activity, 35 INF Treaty, 7, 66, 67, 263 institutchiki rise, of, 222, 223-4 Institute of the USA and Canada (ISKAN), 222, 224, 239, 256, 270 intelligence in Afghanistan, 159, 163, 169 Soviet, 87 and Soviet nuclear strategy, 35-6 international law, Soviet attitude to, 72 Iran, 7, 179, 180 Iran-Iraq war, 5 Isby, David, 20, 217 Islamic leaders, in Afghanistan, 166, 168 Ivanov, V., 189 Ivanovski, E. F., 85 Japan, 3, 4, 5,7, 21,23, 24, 111 Russia's defeat by (1904-5), 130 Jaruzelski, General, 117, 118 Jones, Christopher, 17 Kahn, Herman, 1 Kamanev, S. S., 252 Kandalov, A., 195 Kapitsa, Petr, 200 Karpov, (Deputy Foreign Minister), 232 KGB (Soviet Committee of State Security), 87, 162, 171, 199 Khrushchev, N . , 60, 109, 190, 223, 227, 254 Kipp, Jacob, 23 Kirian, M. M., 259 KIROV battle cruisers, 136, 141 Kitchener, H. H., 1st Earl, 15-16 KOGB (Committee on Defense and State Security), 189-90 Kokoshin, A. A., 85, 235, 236, 262, 268 Koldayeva, Nina, 232-3 Konoplev, V. K., 249, 253, 258 Kontorovich, Vladimir, 198 Korean War, 201 Korolev, Sergei, 200, 202 Koziej, S., 268 Kozlov, S.,73,254 Kryuchkov, Vladimir, 87 Kuklinksi, R.,118 Kulikov, Viktor, 61, 85, 177 Kurchatov, Igor, 202 Kursk, Battle of, 85 Lambeth, Ben, 22 Lapygin,V., 190,208,220-2 Larionov, Valentin, 85, 93, 177, 224, 256, 268

279 Larrabee, Stephen, 238 Latin America, 4, 6 special operations units, 168 Latvia, 107, 108,119,121 Laurinkus, M., 190 Lebedev, Yuri, 231 Lenin, V. L, 58, 68, 69, 250 lighter-than-air vehicles, 203 Lithuania, 107, 108, 119, 121 Liubimov, Major General, 233, 234 Lizichev, A . , 9 1 , 192,232 Lukyanov, Anatoly, 220 Luttwak, Edward N., 38 Makarov, K. V.,148 Maksimov,Y. P., 142, 173 maneuver defense operations, 86 marshals, Red Army, 9 Marx, Karl, 14 Marxism, 2 Marxism-Leninism, 4, 57, 58, 253 and military forecasting, 251-5, 269 Mazowiecki, T., 101, 106 Meyer, Stephen 237, 240 Middle East, 4, 6, 130, 171 Mil', Mikhail, 200, 201, military art, 9, 115, 176 military doctrine, Soviet, 7-11 and the Soviet Navy, 147 and the Warsaw Pact, 102-6, 112-15 military modeling, 226 military science, 9, 176 military services and appointments, 142-3 Military Strategy, 191, 253, 254, 256 Military Thought (Zemskov), 60-1, 71, 73 military-political component, of Soviet military doctrine, 102, 112, 113-15 military-technical branch, of Soviet military doctrine, 82, 102, 113-14,150 Milstein, Colonel General, 12, 255 MIRVed systems American, 61-2 Soviet, 63 missile systems, and military technology, 94 mobilization for defense, 87-91 Moiseev, N. N., 193, 194, 259, 261 Moiseyev, Mikhail, 83, 232-3 Moslems, and the Afghanistan war, 177 MRDs (motorized rifle divisions), 88 in Afghanistan, 161, 175, 176 reductions in, 84 mullahs (Afghanistan), 166, 168 mutual assured destruction, 59, 73

280

Index

mutual deterrence and Grechko's doctrine, 111 maintenance of, 60-7 and mutual security, 67-9, 71-2 Soviet views on, 58-9 National Front of the Fatherland, 166-7 national reconciliation, Soviet policy of, 167 national style, and Soviet nuclear strategy, 30-1 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) 7, 14-15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24, 35, 47, 70, 71, 72, 81, 103, 105, 111 and global nuclear deterrence, 110 naval exercises, 144 and Soviet air defense, 92 and the Soviet Navy, 138, 140 Soviet preparation time for attack on, 87-8 and WTO doctrine, 102, 112, 115, 116 Navies in War and Peace (Gorshkov), 129-30 Navy Soviet 18-20, 127-53 United States, 18-19, 139 Navy, The: Its Role, Its Prospects for Development, and Its Employment, 127-8, 137, 140, 143, 146, 147 "negation of the negation" and military forecasting, 252-3, 254 "new-in-principle" technologies, 196, 197, 203 Nitze, Paul, 15 Nixon, Richard, 256 nuclear doctrine Soviet, 13 US, 13 nuclear war and military forecasting, 263-4 Soviet attempt to wage central, 43-6 Soviet thinking on, 11-14, 45-6, 47-8, 57-9, 68 US thinking on, 11 nuclear weapons, 191, 196 first use of, 110 Gorbachev's proposals on, 72-3 and military forecasting, 253-5 missile systems, 94 R&D, 205, 206-7, 209 and the Soviet Navy, 134-7 officers in Afghanistan, 173-4 education, 114, 116 Ogarkov, Nikolai V., 16-17, 88, 93, 94, 170, 191, 192, 202 and military forecasting, 253, 260, 267-8

OMG (operational maneuvre groups), 92 OSCAR antiship cruise missile submarine, 136, 141 Pacific Ocean fleet, 138, Pakistan, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 159, 160, 167, 168, 169, 179 Pankratov, N. R., 113 parity, strategic, Soviet-US, 59-60, 63-4, 70_3, 73_4? 196 partisan warfare, 252 perestroika, 8, 37, 48, 103, 104, 106, 157, 241,270 in Afghanistan, 173 attitude of military to, 228, 230 and military forecasting, 265 Persia, 12 Pipes, Richard, 58 Podziruk,V.,193 Poland and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, 100, 101 railways, 89 suppression of Solidarity in, 117 territorial defense, 116, 117, 118 and the Warsaw Pact, 103-4, 106, 107, 108, 109, 120 political branch, of Soviet military doctrine, 82 press, military, 228, 236 and Afghanistan, 175 Primakov, Yevgenii, 221 Proektor, D., 15,264 Program 100, 199 program-target planning, 266 Prokhanov, Aleksandr, 229-30 R&D (military research and development), 187-216 railways, Soviet, and mobilization for defense, 89-90 Reagan, Ronald, 66, 68, 202 Reagan Administration and mutual deterrence, 63, 64-7 and SDI ('Star Wars'), 65 and Soviet nuclear strategy, 40 reasonable sufficiency, doctrine of, 70, 71, 72, 104, 193 Red Mullahs (Afghanistan), 166, 168 refugees, Afghan, 160 Reykjavik summit (1986), 66-7, 72-3 Romania territorial defense, 116, 117, 118 and the Warsaw Pact, 102, 104, 107, 110 and WTO doctrine, 113, 114, 115

Index Ryzhkov, Nikolai, 199, 220 Sadovnich, Viktor A., 92 Sagdeev, R., 198,238 Sakharov, Andrei, 201, 227 SALT, (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) 137, 263 and mutual deterrence, 61, 62, 63, 66 and nuclear parity, 109 SAM (surface-to-air missiles), 92-3 SAS (Special Air Service), 164 Schlesinger Doctrine, 61 Scientific and Technological Committee, 188 scientists, and military R&D, 209 SDI (strategic defense initiative), 65-6, 74, 202 "sea-control" zone, 134, 135 "sea-denial" zones, 135, 140 Second World War (Great Patriotic War), 12, 15,31,70,85, 178,255,261 tactical capability, 30 security, mutual, 67-9 self-encirclement, 111 Semeyko, Dr Lev, 85, 227, 256, 263 Shabanov, V., 189,205,206,208,220 Shavrov, I. E., 248 Sheridan, Phillip, 160 Sherr, James, 31 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 192, 196, 199, 219, 223, 234, 239, 261 Shmelev, Nikolai, 204 Simonov, Mikhail, 189, 220 Sinatra doctrine, 106, 108, 116-17 SIOP, 46 SIOP-RISOP exchange, 50 Skubiszewski, K., 100 SLBMs, 33, 128, 141, 146,205 SLOCs (sea lines of communication), 138, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 151 Slyusarev, Albert, 86 Snyder, Jack, 218 Sokolov, Sergei, 65-6, 173 Sokolovsky, V., 191, 253, 254, 255, 256 Solzhenitsyn, A., 6 South Africa, 24 South Korea, 3 Southeast Asia, 4 space weapons, 65-6 special operations forces, in Afghanistan, 157, 161, 162, 163-5, 169, 175, 179 spending, military budget cuts, 228; and R&D, 207-9 mutual reductions, 104-5 Soviet, 7-8, 63 United States, 7-8, 180

281 SSBNs (strategic submarines), 40, 43, 131, 132-4, 136, 137, 138, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145,146, 147, 148, 151,205 Stalin, Joseph, 11, 44, 48, 190, 200, 253 Stalingrad, Battle of, 85 START, 37, 41-3, 47, 50, 51, 74, 149 statements, Soviet, and Soviet nuclear strategy, 37-8 strategic parity, see parity, strategic strategic axis (SN), 10 strategic culture, and Soviet nuclear strategy, 30-1 Strategic Rocket Forces, 32, 133, 142 Strategy: The Logic of Peace and War (Luttwak), 38 Strebkov, Colonel, 72 submarines, 143, 145; see also SSBNs attacks by, 144-5 missile-armed, 130, 136 surface-to-surface missile systems, 92 Sweden, 107, 117 Switzerland, 107, 117 symmetric response, policy of, 203 tactical capability, and Soviet nuclear strategy, 29-30 tactical warfare, in Afghanistan, 174-6 tank armies, Soviet, 12 tank divisions (TDs), 84 in Afghanistan, 175 reductions in, 84 Tarleton, Gael, 18, 19 technology, 17 conventional weapons, 93-4 foreign, 198-203 R&D, 187-216, 255, 257 territorial defense, strategies of, and WTO doctrine, 116-18 theater of war (TV), 10 theaters of action (TVD), 10, 88, 90, 134, 267 Tito (Josip Broz), 109, 117 Trainor, Bernard, 177 transportation problems, and mobilization for defense, 87-91 Tretyak, Ivan, 85, 142, 227 Trident II SLBM, 146 Trofimenko, G., 61, 62, 256 Trotsky, L., 11 Trulock, Notra, 43 Tsygichko, Vitaly, 225 Tsypkin, M., 21 Tukhachevskiy, Mikhail, 191, 252 Tupolev, Andrei, 195, 196, 200 Turkey, 12

282

Index

TVD (Western Theater of Military Operations), 88, 134 TYPHOON ballistic missile submarine, 136, 137, 195 unilateral arms reductions, 227-9, 232 United States attitudes to Soviet Union, 1-2 and the cold war, 4 competition with Soviet Union, 39-40, 48 counterforce capabilities, 62-3 deterrence doctrine, 11 Maritime Strategy, 145, 148 and military forecasting, 265 Navy, 18-19 reliance on global nuclear deterrence, 109-10 and Soviet defense policymaking, 239, 240 and Soviet "new thinking", 193-4 and Soviet nuclear strategy, 33, 39-40 and Soviet weapons technology, 200-1 and strategic parity, 70-3 university students, Soviet, and conscription, 92 unreasonable sufficiency, doctrine of, 110-12,123 Ustinov, Dmitri, 170 Vare, Velio, 190 Varrenikov, V. I., 173 vehicles, military, mobilization for defense, 90 Velikhov, Y., 189,221 Venttsel',E. S., 258 Venttsel'-Grekova, Irina, 259 Vietnam Soviet naval base, 135, 148 special operations units, 164 Vietnam war, 4, 5, 256 and Afghanistan, 176-7 Vigor, Peter, 37 Vladivostok accords, 62 VNIISI (Ail-Union Scientific Institute for Systems Research), 225 Vol'skiy,A., 189 Volkogonov, D.,68-9 Vorob'yev, I., 86

VPK (Soviet Military-Industrial Commission), 198, 199 VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft carriers, 130, 136 WAD (secret police), 160, 167, 168 war and military forecasting, 250-1 Soviet views on, 9-10, 57-9 "War and Peace in the Nuclear Age" (Volkogonov), 68-9 Warsaw Pact, 70, 71, 105, 111 disintegration of, 1, 3, 7, 100-2, 105-8 and military doctrine, 102-6, 112-15 and the Soviet Navy, 134 weapons see also conventional weapons; nuclear weapons and military forecasting, 255, 257, 258 offensive and defensive, 47, 95 quality, 195-8 Soviet Navy, 130-3 and Soviet nuclear strategy, 32-4 space weapons, 65-6 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 21 West Germany see Federal Republic of Germany Western technology, and Soviet R&D, 198-203 Wilde, Oscar, 31 Wilson, Edmund, 22 writings, Soviet, and Soviet nuclear strategy, 37-8 Yakovlev, Aleksandr, 199, 220-1, 235, 238, 262 Yazov, Dmitri T., 70-1, 83-4, 91, 92, 94-5, 194, 197, 200, 228 and defense policymaking, 220 Yeltsin, Boris, 235 Yugoslavia territorial defense, 116, 117, 118 and the Warsaw Pact, 102, 107, 110, 116 Zaitsev, General, 173 Zakharov, A. A., 159 Zamascikov, Sergei, 239 Zemskov, General, 60-1 Zhurkin, Vitalii, 105, 226 ZSU-23-4 air defense guns, 93