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Soviet Union [USSR] ARMS CONTROL AND MILITARY OBJECTIVES
Since the late l960s, the Soviet Union has made arms control an
important component of its foreign and military policy. Soviet
public diplomacy liberally used arms control and disarmament
slogans. Arms control proposals and signed agreements, however,
have been carefully coordinated with doctrinal requirements and
weapons programs.
Soviet objectives in all areas of arms control--strategic,
space, intermediate-range nuclear, and conventional weapons--have
been, first, to help avert a world war, and, second, to prevent the
erosion of Soviet capability for fighting such a war. If efforts to
avert war were to fail, Soviet leaders required that their armed
forces be able to fulfill military missions and win all military
conflicts. War was to be avoided by entering into agreements that
would limit an adversary's weapons and forestall the adversary's
development of a war-winning military posture. Capability for
fighting and winning a war was to be continued by acquiring the
necessary arsenal within the constraints of an agreement and by
maintaining it against all odds.
Data as of May 1989
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