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European Defence: How Real is the Soviet Threat?

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The European Defence Initiative

Abstract

It is customary for those who draw attention to the Russian threat and who seek a Europeanist defence option to argue that the Soviets are aggressive and intend to rule the world and that this can be proved by looking at Soviet ideology, military strategy, military capabilities and foreign policy. They argue that the Russian attitude to war is very different from Western attitude; theirs is shaped by an ideology that stresses the role of violence as a midwife of progress. One of the precepts of Soviet Communism is that the class struggle will lead to an inevitable conflict between the exploiters and exploited which will bring about the establishment of communism.1 At the international level, this struggle is seen through the division of the world into an imperialist camp and a socialist camp locked into a fight to the finish.

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Notes

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© 1986 Geoffrey Lee Williams and Alan Lee Williams

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Williams, G.L., Williams, A.L. (1986). European Defence: How Real is the Soviet Threat?. In: The European Defence Initiative. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07825-7_6

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