Abstract
There are three common ways of understanding arms races. They are either the product of mutual misperception, in that each side arms for defensive purposes, but its opponent views these measures as evidence of aggressive intent. Or one side initiates developments in an arms race, either with genuine aggressive intent or because it is compelled to do so by domestic and economic forces, and the other side responds by arming in self-defence.1 A third view describes both sides’ arms policies as motivated by internal political, economic, and technological forces; the adversary’s actions serve only to rationalize the procurement of weapons and development of strategies desired for other reasons.2
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Notes
See the discussion of the Eigendynamik in Dieter Senghaas, Rüstung und Militarismus, Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp, 1972.
See, e.g., G. A. Trofimenko, ‘Nekotorye aspekty voenno-politicheskoi strategii SShA’ (Some aspects of the military-political strategy of the USA), SShA, no. 10, October 1970, pp. 23–4; and the discussion in Samuel B. Payne, Jr., The Soviet Union and SALT, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1980
G. I. Pokrovskii, Science and Technology in Contemporary War, originally published in 1956, transl. by Raymond L. Garthoff, New York, Praeger, 1959, pp. 91–2.
G. A. Arbatov, quoted in Morton Schwartz, Soviet Perceptions of the United States, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1978, p. 20.
Franklyn Griffiths, ‘The Sources of American Conduct: Soviet Perspectives and Their Policy Implications’, International Security, vol. 9, no. 2 (Fall 1984) pp. 3–50.
For discussion, see Walter C. Clemens, Jr., The Superpowers and Arms Control, Lexington, MA, Lexington Books, 1973, p. 89.
Bruce Parrott, Politics and Technology in the Soviet Union, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1983, pp. 242–3
Lincoln P. Bloomfield, Walter C. Clemens, Jr. and Franklyn Griffiths, Khrushchev and the Arms Race: Soviet Interests in Arms Control and Disarmament, 1954–1964, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1966.
See Brezhnev’s comments to the Yugoslav ambassador in 1971: Veljko Micunovic, ‘The Moscow Years’, Survey, vol. 28, no. 3 (August 1984) 93.
For an excellent discussion of this trend, see Pat Litherland, Gorbachev and Arms Control: Civilian Experts and Soviet Policy, Peace Research Report no. 12, University of Bradford, UK, School of Peace Studies, 1986.
See, e.g., Vitaly Zhurkin, Sergei Karaganov and Andrei Kortunov, ‘Reasonable Sufficiency — or How to Break the Vicious Circle’, New Times, no. 40, 12 October 1987, pp. 13–15; and the discussion in Raymond L. Garthoff, ‘New Thinking in Soviet Military Doctrine’, Washington Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 3, Summer 1988, pp. 131–58.
Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race: How the United States and the Soviet Union Develop New Military Technologies, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1988.
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© 1990 Carl G. Jacobsen
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Evangelista, M. (1990). The Arms Race and Arms Control: Soviet Views. In: Jacobsen, C.G. (eds) Strategic Power: USA/USSR. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20574-5_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20574-5_12
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