Present and Future Prospects

Abstract

It is difficult to produce simple conclusions about the rise of the modern Soviet Navy. On the one hand monolithic or monocausal explanations do not do justice to the complexities both of the Soviet Union and of her maritime aspirations. On the other, the Soviet Navy has absorbed far too high a proportion of the country’s resources simply to be dismissed as the product of an absence of policy. The Soviet Union has not acquired a blue-water navy in a fit of absence of mind, or simply through a process of institutional drift. Nor can the rise of the Soviet Navy be put down merely to a mindless compulsion to match the West at every point on the spectrum of force. It is therefore unwise to conclude either that Soviet leaders have a satisfactorily clear and simple set of maritime objectives, or that they have no objectives at all. In truth, it is possible to see two different kinds of motivation in their policy of maritime expansion, both of which need to be given their due prominence.