Abstract
The dogged refusal of the Russians to endorse any of McNamara’s prescriptions for intra-war deterrence or a stable arms race, undermined both confidence in McNamara’s prognoses for the future and the quality of his original diagnoses. The potential convergence of Soviet and American destinies was never as great as assumed by McNamara, but nor was the actual divergence as fundamental or as damaging as his detractors suggested. In his prime, McNamara’s faith in conclusions reached by a process of rigorous analysis, pushing to one side the deadweight of tradition, was contagious. It was not difficult to presume that he and his staff represented the furthest point on some strategic learning curve, to which internal opponents, allies and potential enemies were to be brought by a process of patient education in the realities of the age.
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Notes
Roman Kolkowicz et al., The Soviet Union and Arms Control: A Superpower Dilemma (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), pp. 34–7.
Interview with Robert McNamara, 15 February 1966, in Documents on Disarmament 1967 (Washington, DC: US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1967).
Benjamin S. Lambeth, Selective Nuclear Options in American and Soviet Strategic Policy (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1976), p. 14.
Nikita Khruschev, Khruschev Remembers, vol. 2, The Last Testament (London: André Deutsch, 1974), pp. 48–50.
Edward L. Warner, The Military in Contemporary Soviet Politics (New York: Praeger, 1977), pp. 99–100.
Thomas Wolfe, Soviet Power and Europe 1945–70 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), p. 134.
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© 1983 The International Institute for Strategic Studies
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Freedman, L. (1983). The Soviet Approach to Deterrence. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04271-5_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04271-5_17
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