TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/83/83capmoy.5

Text File | 1990-12-01 | 6KB | 106 lines

                $$HIJ┴
≤
                                            %««Debate over a Doctrine

January 2, 1984

Soviet nuclear strategy has aroused U.S. suspicions

At the heart of the Soviet-American confrontation lies one momentous
riddle:  Are the Soviets willing to start a nuclear war, and do they
think they could win it?

The public and official Soviet answer to that question is a resounding
no.  Leonid Brezhnev declared several times that a nuclear war would be
"unwinnable" and "madness."  Just five months before his death in 1982,
he sent a formal message to the United Nations declaring that the
Kremlin "assumes an obligation not to be the first to use nuclear
weapons."  Brezhnev challenged everyone else to make a similar pledge,
a challenge that the U.S. promptly declined.  (According to U.S. nuclear
doctrine, it is only the longstanding American threat to use nuclear
weapons against a Soviet invasion of Western Europe that deters Moscow
from any such attack.)

The official Soviet posture has not changed since Yuri Andropov came to
power.  A few weeks after he was named to succeed Brezhnev, the Soviet
party chief declared, "A nuclear war, whether big or small, whether
limited or total, must not be allowed to break out."

But apart from what top Kremlin officials may say in public, the
questions remains:  What are the Soviets really thinking?  Though no
definitive answer is possible, some U.S. experts believe that key Soviet
military strategists consider a nuclear war "winnable."  "What is most
disturbing about what we observe from the Soviet command. . . system,"
Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle testified before a House
committee, "is that it looks to us like one that proceeds from the
belief that nuclear war could be fought and won."

One troubling implication in that idea is that if a nuclear war could
be won, it would probably be won by the nation that struck first, by
surprise.  No top U.S. official would say that Moscow might be designing
its strategy based on such a preemptive strike, but some think-tank
strategists are less reticent.  Says Raymond Garthoff of the Brookings
Institution: "If war came, they would probably launch an all-out attack
on the U.S.  They might go first, with everything."

There is relative little to support such a judgment.  The evidence most
often cited is an article by Marshall Nikolai Ogarkov, chief of staff
of the Soviet armed forces, in the 1980 eduction of the Soviet Military
Encyclopedia.  "If a nuclear war is foisted upon the Soviet Union,"
wrote Ogarkov, the Soviets "will have definite advantages stemming from
the just goals of the war and the advanced nature of their social and
state system."  This he concluded, "creates objective possibilities for
them to achieve victory."

en some conservative Western Kremlinologists began to interpret that bit
of ideological breast beating as a strategy for nuclear victory, the
Moscow press took pains to discredit such a view.  Western experts,
however, have found other, less ambiguous Soviet predictions of nuclear
victory.  For example, the 1972 edition of the book Marxism-Leninism on
War and Army, written by a collective of authors, declared, "Today's
weapons make it possible to achieve strategic objectives very quickly.
The very first nuclear attach on the enemy may inflict such immense
casualties and produce such vast destruction that his economic, moral-
political and military capabilities will collapse."

Just how authoritative such writing s are remains debatable, but the
fact that this book appeared in the early 1970s indicates that it had
no immediate effect on Soviet strategy.  Indeed, there is evidence that
Soviet assessments of nuclear war have become more cautious in recent
years.  Says Adam Ulam, director of Harvard's Russian Research Center:
"When the Soviets' nuclear power was puny, in the mid-'50s, they were
boasting and bluffing that war would mean the end of capitalism, and
socialism would emerge triumphant.  Since then, on several occasions,
the Soviets have conceded that the results of nuclear war are
incalculable and most likely cataclysmic."

More important, perhaps, is that fact that the Soviets, like the U.S.,
repeatedly carry out military exercises that are planned as part of a
nuclear war.  These include the simulated launching of nuclear missiles.
Despite the widespread idea that nay nuclear war would be over in a day
or two, the Soviet maneuvers assume a prolonged conflict.  In the fall
of 1980, for example, they spent several days practicing the reloading
of 25 to 50 silos housing giant intercontinental SS-18 missiles.  But
such maneuvers might have been primarily designed to show the U.S. that
the Soviets believe they could survive and retaliate against a U.S.
nuclear attack.

One of the basic reasons for Western suspicion of Soviet strategy is
that Western analysts tend to interpret even defensive preparations for
war as signs of a willingness to wage war.  The Soviets disagree.  They
suffered a surprise attack by the Germans in 1941, and Marxist ideology
tells them they will be attacked again.  To make whatever preparations
can be made seems only sensible.  More than a few U.S. experts believe
the West should adopt similar policies.

Strategists who suspect the Soviets of thinking that a nuclear war is
winnable have become more influential under the Reagan Administration,
but there are still many who disagree.  Says Gregory Flynn, deputy
director of the Paris-based Atlantic Institute:  "The most important
thing that we always overlook is that everything the Soviets have ever
said or written has as its starting point that we started the war.  The
preponderance of evidence is that the Soviets just do not want to fight
a war."

--By Otto Friedrich.  Reported by John Moody/Moscow and Bruce W.
Nelan/Washington