Abstract
The previous chapter concentrated on the Soviet Union’s external strategic situation. It identified certain tendencies in the international system that have worsened the USSR’s geopolitical encirclement and heightened its incentive to build its military power. The main questions about the development of Soviet military power that require consideration in this chapter are:
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1.
Does the USSR have more military capability than it requires for defensive purposes?
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2.
Is the Soviet Union dedicated to achieving military superiority over all its conceivable enemies?
These are not easy questions to answer, but they are central to the current debate about the USSR in the West. Unfortunately, much of the discussion about Soviet military power tends to compare military capabilities that are not comparable at all. At the most basic level, for example, simply comparing Soviet with US forces is not a very useful analytical approach. What needs to be assessed is the alignment of all opposing forces on both sides, including NATO, the Warsaw Pact, Japan — and perhaps China.
The Russe trusteth rather to his number.
Giles Fletcher, 1591
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Notes
See, for example, Richard Pipes, ‘Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War’, Commentary, July 1977; Richard Pipes, ‘Soviet Global Strategy’, Commentary, April 1980; Richard Pipes, ‘How to Cope With the Soviet Threat’, Commentary, August 1984; Colin S. Gray, ‘Nuclear Strategy: A Case for a Theory of Victory’, International Security, Summer 1979; William E. Odom, ‘Whither the Soviet Union?’ Washington Quarterly, Spring 1981; Paul Nitze, ‘Assuring Strategic Stability’, Foreign Affairs, January 1976; Joseph D. Douglass and Amoretta M. Hoeber, Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1979);
Leon Gouré, Foy Kohler and Mose Harvey (eds), The Role of Nuclear Forces in Current Soviet Strategy (Miami: Advanced International Studies Institute, Monographs in International Affairs, 1974); William Scott, ‘Soviet Military Doctrine and Strategy: Realities and Misunderstandings’, Strategic Review, Summer 1975; and
Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1983).
General David Jones, as quoted in Air Force Magazine, March 1976.
See, for example, the works by John Baylis and Gerald Segal Soviet Strategy (London: Croom Helm, 1981) and
Derek Leebaert (ed.), Soviet Military Thinking (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981).
Dennis Ross, Rethinking Soviet Strategic Policy: Inputs and Implications Center for Arms Control and International Security, ACIS Working Paper no. 5 (Berkeley: University of California, June 1977) p. 2.
Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime (London: Penguin Books, 1982) p. 120.
Christopher Duffy, Borodino and the War of1812 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973) p. 52.
Geoffrey Jukes, Carpathian Disaster: Death of an Army, (London: Pan Book, 1973) pp. 144, 154.
C. D. Bellamy, ‘British Views of Russia: Russian Views of Britain’, in Philip Towle (ed.), Estimating Foreign Military Power (London: Croom Helm, 1982) p. 70.
Arthur J. Alexander, Patterns of Organisational Influence in Soviet Military Procurement (Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation, N-1327-AF, April 1982), p. 2.
Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power, 2nd edn (Washington, DC, March 1983) pp. 2, 9.
See, for example, Marshal N. V. Ogarkov in Izvestiya, 23 September 1983, pp. 4–5, and in Izvestiya 9 May 1983, pp. 1–2;
and Major-General Professor A. Milovidov in Krasnaya Zvezda, 28 March 1984, pp. 2–3.
Jonathan Alford, ‘Perspectives on Strategy’, in John D. Steinbruner and Leon V. Sigal (eds), Alliance Security: NATO and the No-First Use Question (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1983) p. 98.
Major General S. N. Kozlov, ‘Voennaya Doktrina i Voennaya Nauka’ (War Doctrine and War Science), in Problemy Revolyutsii v Voennom Dele (Voenizdat, Moscow, 1965) p. 67.
Robert P. Berman and John C. Baker, Soviet Strategic Forces (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1982) p. 27.
Marshal V. D. Sokolovskiy, Voyennaya Strategiya (Voenizdat, Moscow, 1968) (third edn translated as Haniet Fast Scott (ed.), Soviet Military Strategy (New York: Crane, Russak, 1980) ) p. 282.
This list has been adapted from Joseph D. Douglass, Soviet Military Strategy in Europe (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980) p. 74; Berman and Baker, Soviet Strategic Forces, p. 19;
and Stephen M. Meyer, Soviet Theatre Nuclear Forces (Part I), Adelphi Paper no. 187 (London: IISS, 1984) p. 26.
When President Kennedy came to power, there was a rapid change in the American threat to the USSR. Between President Eisenhower’s proposed budget for fiscal year 1962 and President Kennedy’s budget for fiscal year 1963, US plans doubled the number of Minutemen ICBMs to be deployed in hardened silos and the Polaris SLBM force was also more than doubled. Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Programs of the Kennedy Administration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980) pp. 116–17, 137.
Joseph D. Douglass, The Soviet Theater Nuclear Offensive (US Air Force, Washington, DC: USGPO, 1982) p. 7.
Ilana Kass and Michael J. Deane, ‘The Role of Nuclear Weapons in the Modern Theater Battlefield: The Current Soviet View’, Comparative Strategy, vol. 4, no. 3, 1984, pp. 193–4.
Ibid, p. 131; see also Douglass, The Soviet Theater Nuclear Offensive, pp. 4–6, 101; Douglass, Soviet Military Strategy in Europe, p. 165; P. H. Vigor, The Soviet View of War, Peace and Neutrality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975) p. 125; Meyer, Soviet Theatre Nuclear Forces, pp. 19, 25; and William W. Kaufmann, ‘Nuclear Deterrence in Central Europe’, in Steinbruner and Sigal (eds), Alliance Security, p. 30.
Colonel M. Shirokov, ‘Military Geography at the Present Stage’, Voennaya Mysl’, no. 11, 1966, pp. 59–60; see also I. G. Pavlovskii, Izvestiya, 13 March 1975.
See A. A. Sidorenko, Nastuplenie (The Offensive) (Moscow, 1970) (translated US Air Force (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1974) ).
George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1950–63 (Boston: Little Brown, 1972) vol. 2, p. 331.
Marshal N. V. Ogarkov, ‘Voyennaya Strategiya’ (Military Strategy), Sovetskaya Voyennaya Entsiklopediya (Soviet Military Encyclopedia) (Voenizdat, Moscow, 1979) vol. 7, pp. 564–5.
L. Semeyko in Krasnaya Zvezda, 5 August 1983, p. 3.
Paul F. Langer, ‘Soviet Military Power in Asia’, in Donald S. Zagoria (ed.), Soviet Policy in East Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982) p. 271.
For a discussion of this contingency see Harry Gelman, The Soviet Far East Buildup and Soviet Risk-Taking Against China (Santa Monica, California: The Rand Corporation, R-2943-AF, August 1982).
Admiral S. G. Gorshkov, Morskaya Moshch Gosudarstva (Voenizdat, Moscow, 1976) (translated as The Sea Power of the State (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1979) ) p. 229.
Paul H. Nitze, Leonard Sullivan Jr and the Atlantic Council, Securing the Seas (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979) pp. 109–11.
Admiral N. Amelko, Moscow News in English, 18 March 1984, p. 5.
For Soviet Sources see: Trofimenko, ‘Counterforce’, pp. 34–5, 39, 45; Henry A. Trofimenko, Changing Attitudes Towards Deterrence ACIS Working Paper no. 25 (Berkeley, California: University of California, July 1980);
I. A. Korotkov, Istoriya Sovetskoi Voennoi Mysli (History of Soviet Military Thought) (Moscow: Nauka, 1980); Major General V. Zemskov, ‘Characteristic Features of Modern Wars and Possible Methods of Conducting Them’, Voyennaya Mysl’, no. 7, July 1969.
Helmut Sonnenfeldt and William G. Hyland, Soviet Perspectives on Security, Adelphi Paper no. 150 (London: IISS, 1979) pp. 13–14.
A. A. Grechko, Vooruzhennyye Sily Sovetskovo Gosudarstva (The Armed Forces of the Soviet State) (Voenizdat, Moscow, 2nd edn, 1975) p. 340 (English language version (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977) ) p. 270.
Joshua Epstein argues that prevailing assumptions about the East-West balance of power rest on erroneous measures of military strength. Virtually the entire defence debate concerns itself with peacetime inputs — static inventories of men and machines. He develops a mathematical method for integrating operational factors (skill, flexibility, coordination, sustainability) and technological factors with static military inputs to arrive at a judgement about wartime effectiveness. The particular wartime mission that he examines is the Soviet offensive tactical air threat to NATO. Epstein concludes that Soviet frontal aviation falls short of success criterion by a very wide margin, and that a devastating Soviet attack on NATOs conventional defence seems eminently unlikely: Joshua M. Epstein, Measuring Military Power: The Soviet Air Threat to Europe, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
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© 1986 International Institute for Strategic Studies
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Dibb, P. (1986). Soviet Military Requirements and Responses. In: The Soviet Union. Studies in International Security. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07021-3_5
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