Supporting Paper: Soviet Operational Concepts in the 1980s

Abstract

The “Soviet Threat” is not an easy thing to describe in a balanced and objective fashion. The very word “threat” is emotive and subjective. First, its use presupposes that a conclusion as to the nature of Soviet power and its relationship to the West has already been made, and that further discussion will merely add detail to that conclusion. Secondly, there is the constant danger that the analyst will: (1) either overplay “the threat” in order to produce a “bogey man” for political or military psychological purposes; or that, (2) in attempting to display his “balance” and “objectivity” and to avoid being associated with a Western military or “bourgeois” outlook, he will conclude that the Soviet forces are purely self-defensive and present no “threat” at all.