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Soviet Union [USSR] Military Doctrine in the Late 1980s
The l970s and l980s were a period of questioning and transition
in Soviet doctrine and strategy. Soviet military doctrine continued
to assume that the Soviet Union could fight and prevail in a
nuclear war and that Soviet strategic nuclear missiles could
influence a war's course and outcome. Nevertheless, prominent
military figures voiced concern about the military efficacy of
nuclear weapons, among them the former chief of the General Staff,
Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai V. Ogarkov; Colonel General
Makhmut A. Gareev, author of a monograph on military theoretician
Frunze; and Volkogonov, chief editor of Marxist-Leninist
Teaching on War and the Army. They each expressed reservations
about whether a world war of the future could be fought and won
with nuclear weapons. Ogarkov, in particular, advanced the
revolutionary view that a twenty-first-century battlefield might be
dominated by nonnuclear, high-technology armaments and a global war
could be fought with conventional weapons alone.
In the mid- to late 1980s, CPSU leaders and some military
officials began to focus on the political aspects of Soviet
national security and played down its military aspect. They
advocated a new military doctrine based on the defensive concept of
"reasonable sufficiency" and on a military potential "sufficient
for safeguarding the security of the country" but not adequate for
launching offensives, especially surprise attacks on an adversary.
In l987 some military spokesmen also mentioned the possible
reformulation of Soviet military doctrine. The chief of the General
Staff, Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergei F. Akhromeev, and the
minister of defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union Dmitrii T. Iazov,
declared that a new Soviet military doctrine was being developed in
accordance with the principles of the "new thinking" in foreign and
military policy. In May l987, the Warsaw Pact's Consultative
Committee met in East Berlin and adopted a document on a defenseoriented military doctrine. In particular, the document called for
reduction of conventional armaments in Europe to a level that could
not support offensive operations.
When asked to explain the purportedly new concepts of war
prevention and military sufficiency, however, Warsaw Pact and
Soviet spokesmen mentioned an emphasis on quality, high combat
readiness, and decisive counteroperations, in short, a victory
orientation that a purely defensive doctrine based on "reasonable
sufficiency" could not support. The contradiction at the heart of
Soviet doctrine, which claimed to be defensive but posited war
scenarios calling for applying force offensively, damaged Soviet
credibility in the West and led to conflicting views on Soviet
intentions. Many Western analysts, among them William T. Lee and
Richard F. Staar, continued to interpret Soviet intentions as "very
aggressive." Others, such as Michael MccGwire and Raymond L.
Garthoff, who focused on the Soviet viewpoint, saw the Soviet Union
as being constrained by doctrinal requirements and threat
assessments to adopt a force posture adequate for fighting a world
war with both nuclear and conventional weapons.
In the late 1980s, a consensus emerged in the West on the
probable Soviet doctrine. Western specialists believed that the
Soviet Union would not start a nuclear war without provocation.
They also believed, however, that, should a war start, the Soviet
Union would strive for victory and for protection of its territory
from enemy strikes. Western specialists also held that the Soviet
leadership would prefer to fight a conventional war in Europe and,
should such a war escalate, would try to limit a nuclear war to
Central and Western Europe. A protracted conventional conflict in
the shadow of nuclear weapons, possibly worldwide, was another
likely option. Many Western analysts also thought that, despite
having in 1982 unilaterally forsworn the first use of nuclear
weapons, the Soviet Union retained the option of a surprise first
strike against the United States. They maintained that Soviet
leaders would consider this option if they believed they could
thereby win the war and limit damage to the homeland.
Data as of May 1989
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