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Soviet Union [USSR] Conventional Arms Control
For many years, the Soviet Union could not reconcile
conventional arms control with its military objectives of avoiding
wars and being prepared to fight them. Soviet operational concepts
have called for numerical superiority in conventional forces both
to deter the adversary from starting a war and to destroy the
adversary's forces and armaments and occupy its territory should a
war break out. Yet deep reductions in Soviet armed forces have a
precedent: Khrushchev reduced conventional forces by more than 2.1
million personnel between l955 and l958, and he announced further
reductions of 1.2 million troops in l960.
Since Khrushchev's ouster in 1964, the Soviet military has
frowned on personnel reductions. In the l960s, when United States
secretary of state William Rogers suggested negotiations to reduce
armed forces in Europe, the Soviet leaders resisted bitterly. They
finally agreed to negotiate in exchange for United States
participation in a European security conference. The Mutual
Balanced Forces Reduction Talks (MBFR) began in l973 but remained
stalemated for years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet
conventional buildup in Europe progressed. Soviet leaders showed
interest in the talks only in December l975, when the Western
proposal included a reduction in United States tactical nuclear
weapons in Europe.
In 1987 the Soviet Union called for a new forum to discuss the
balance of conventional forces in Europe "from the Atlantic to the
Urals." Soviet leaders appeared to espouse the new Soviet strategic
concepts of "reasonable sufficiency" and nonprovocative defense,
and they maintained that reductions in conventional forces should
make it impossible for either side to undertake offensive actions
and launch surprise strikes. However, the Soviet military resisted
a defensive concept because deep cuts in personnel and armaments
such as tanks could prevent Soviet forces from pursuing their
military objectives under the doctrine calling for victory.
In December 1988, Gorbachev announced unilateral reductions in
Soviet armed forces. Soviet forces were to be reduced by 500,000
men by 1991. Soviet forces in the Atlantic-to-the-Urals area were
to be reduced by 10,000 tanks, 8,500 artillery pieces, and 800
combat aircraft. Several Soviet tank divisions were to be withdrawn
from Eastern Europe, together with assault-landing and assaultriver -crossing units. Soviet and East European divisions were to be
reorganized, with a major cutback in the number of tanks. During
1988 and 1989, the Non-Soviet Warsaw Pact countries also announced
unilateral reductions in manpower and conventional armaments.
In 1989 the Soviet leadership appeared to be interested in
negotiating seriously on conventional arms control in order to
reduce the threat of new Western weapons and operational concepts,
to create a "breathing space" for internal economic and social
restructuring, and to divert manpower and resources to the
country's economy. New negotiations on Conventional Forces in
Europe (CFE) opened in March 1989. Both Warsaw Pact and NATO
negotiators expressed interest in stabilizing the strategic
situation in Europe by eliminating capabilities for initiating
surprise attacks and large-scale offensive actions.
Although Gorbachev proclaimed his commitment to a doctrine that
emphasized war avoidance, diplomacy, and the achievement of
political goals with political means, the Soviet military continued
to press for high-quality military capabilities, commensurate with
perceived present and future threats to Soviet and Warsaw Pact
security. Soviet military authorities endorsed Gorbachev's arms
control efforts as well as the concepts of parity and "reasonable
sufficiency." Nevertheless, they supported Gorbachev's pragmatic
policies largely in the hope that a renewed economy would help
create a modern industrial base. Such a base, they believed, would
make it possible not merely to counter Western emerging
technologies but also to produce fundamentally new weapons for the
twenty-first century.
A transformation of NATO and of the Warsaw Pact, as proposed by
Soviet leaders in 1989, would necessitate that both sides adopt a
defensive, no-victory doctrine, stressing negotiations and
restoration of the status quo. On the Soviet side, this would call
for rejecting or circumventing Marxist-Leninist dogma and for
revising political goals. Only then could the rewriting of Soviet
military art yield a strategy, operational art, and tactics based
on genuinely defensive principles, excluding deep offensive
operations, massive counteroffensives, and the requisite
capabilities. In 1989, however, Soviet military doctrine still bore
the burden of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary ideology predicting
the eventual worldwide ascendancy of socialism.
* * *
Most original sources on Soviet military doctrine, policy, and
strategy are available only in Russian. However, a good
introduction to Soviet military thought, The Soviet Art of
War, edited by Harriet F. Scott and William F. Scott, is a
judicious combination of the editors' commentaries and of excerpts
from translated writings of Soviet military authorities. Paul D.
Kelley's Soviet General Doctrine for War, a 1987 publication
of the United States Army Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center
(USAITAC), contains a detailed treatment of Soviet military
doctrine and military science. Students of Soviet tactics should
also consider William P. Baxter's The Soviet Way of Warfare,
in which the author discusses the offensive and defensive options
of Soviet tactical combat. Michael MccGwire's Military
Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy offers a comprehensive
overview of Soviet strategic and military objectives and of Soviet
operational planning. Finally, the annual Department of Defense
publication Soviet Military Power presents the official
United States Department of Defense view of Soviet military
developments.
For the reader who would like to study Soviet military thought,
the United States Air Force series of translations of Soviet
military monographs is invaluable. Among the most illuminating and
thought-provoking in the series are the l972 translation of the
l968 classic, Marxism-Leninism on War and the Army, and the
controversial Basic Principles of Operational Art and
Tactics by V. E. Savkin. Although the heavy nuclear emphasis in
both works appeared outdated in the 1980s, the doctrinal tenets and
many of the strategic and operational concepts remained valid.
Scientific-Technical Progress and the Revolution in Military
Affairs edited by N.A. Lomovand, published in l973, is an
important reminder that nuclear weapons were only a stage in the
technological revolution and that other revolutionary developments
may follow. (For further information and complete citations,
see Soviet Union USSR -
Bibliography.)
Data as of May 1989
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