SOVIET GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS IN THE GLOBAL POWER ARENA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05T00644R000601570003-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 76
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 14, 2009
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: May 9, 1978
• Content Type: NIE

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Director of Secret
I ,s4c I Central NOFORN-NOCONTRACT
Intelligence
Soviet Goals and Expectations
in the Global Power Arena
National Intelligence Estimate
67
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NOFORN-NOCONTRACT
SOVIET GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS
IN THE GLOBAL POWER ARENA
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Secret
NOFORN/NOCONTRACT
THIS ESTIMATE IS ISSUED BY THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE.
THE NATIONAL FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE BOARD CONCURS,
EXCEPT AS NOTED IN THE TEXT.
The following intelligence organizations participated in the preparation of
the Estimate:
The Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence organizations of the Departments
of State, Treasury, Energy and Defense, and the National Security Agency.
Also Participating:
The Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army
The Director of Naval Intelligence, Department of the Navy
The Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Department of the Air Force
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NOFORN-NOCONTRACT
This Estimate focuses on Soviet foreign policy and mili-
tary power and the relation between them. Hence, it seeks
to probe the perceptions, expectations, and goals of the
secretive Soviet leadership. Its conclusions are necessarily
drawn from an evidentiary base that is complex, fragmentary,
and imprecise. It seeks to analyze the significance of a
wide range of actions and evidence. Inevitably, the role of
judgment is high. No two analysts will see eye to eye on
the relative emphasis on all points or the full range of
issues in every detail.
Our objective, however, was not to reach agreement
on all these issues, actions, and evidence, but to clarify
the basic thrust of Soviet foreign and military policy.
This made it essential that the discussions be coherent
and integrated and not confused or cluttered by dissent-
ing views on details or by secondary issues.
Accordingly, the participating NFIB agencies agreed
to adopt a novel procedure for this Estimate tailored to
its unusual character. Successive drafts were written in
the office of the National Intelligence Officer for the USSR
and Eastern Europe in consultation with analysts from the
respective agencies. In a series of meetings, the major
themes and key judgments of the drafts were discussed by
these experts from the various agencies and by a panel
of outside senior reviewers. Thus, the Estimate has taken
into account the views and criticisms of the various NFIB
agencies,but to a much higher degree than is customary
for major intelligence estimates, it bears the stamp of a
unified, integrated view. In the interest of promoting
a coherent and unified analysis, participating agencies
agreed to restrict dissents to matters of substantial dif-
ferences regarding the main thrust of the Estimate. In
the end only one agency felt required to include a formal
dissenting view (see the end of the Key Judgments). But
several agencies would differ in varying degrees from the
Estimate with respect to matters of relative emphasis and
some secondary issues. Doubtless, each of them would have
expressed some of the formulations somewhat differently.
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NOFORN-NOCONTRACT
Nevertheless, on the main thrust and principal judg-
ments of this Estimate, which is the most comprehensive
of its kind executed in recent years, there is broad con-
currence in the Intelligence Community. Accordingly, I
have authorized its issuance as approved by the National
Foreign Intelligence Board.
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NOFORN-NOCONTRACT
Page
PREFACE .......................................... i
KEY JUDGMENTS .................................... v
I. INTRODUCTION ................................ 1
II. THE THRUST OF CURRENT SOVIET MILITARY
POLICY ..................................... 5
A. Legacy of the Postwar Strategic Effort.. 5
B. Strategic Nuclear Forces ................ 9
C. Forces for the European Theater ......... 15
D. Forces against China .................... 18
E. Military Instruments for Distant Power
Projection ............................. 20
III. THE THRUST OF CURRENT SOVIET FOREIGN
POLICY ..................................... 23
A. Detente Diplomacy Toward the United
States ................................. 25
B. Detente Diplomacy Toward Western Europe. 30
C. Defense of the Status Quo in Eastern
Europe ................................. 32
D. Containment of China ................. 33
E. Movement into the Third World ........... 35
A. The Internal Outlook .................... 41
B. The Military Outlook .................... 44
C. The Foreign Policy Outlook .............. 46
D. Discontinuities and Alternative Soviet
Forecasts .............................. 49
E. The Successor Leadership ................ 52
F. Conclusion .............................. 54
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1. Soviet leaders appreciate that military strength
is the foundation of the USSR's status as a global super-
power, and will remain through the coming decade the key
to its prospects in the world arena. They are sensitive
to the view of some Westerners that other, nonmilitary
factors, particularly international economic ones, may be
acquiring a dominant role, and they know that the Soviet
Union has little hope in the foreseeable future of be-
coming truly competitive with the advanced nations of the
West in economic, technological, and social-cultural sources
of influence and attraction. But they are persuaded by
Soviet ideology, Russian history, and by their own life
experiences to see political conflict involving the use
of force or conducted in its shadow as the motor driving
development both within states and in the international sys-
tem. Their self-interest as well as their beliefs lead
them in the conduct of foreign affairs to press global and
regional issues of security, in which the weight of their
military power can be brought to bear to political advan-
tage.
2. To the extent that comprehensive comparisons are
possible, it is clear that the USSR on balance has over-
come its past military inferiority in relation to the United
States. The Soviets know the USSR still lags in many de-
fense-related technologies. They are envious and appre-
hensive about the latent technological potential of the US
as a military competitor. But they have learned from their
long experience of military competition with the United
States that powerful domestic political pressures, of a
kind to which they are largely immune, reinforce American
criteria of military sufficiency, which are different from
their own, in inhibiting fuller exploitation by the US of
its enormous military potential.
3. The Soviets judge themselves to have a robust
equality with the US in central strategic nuclear forces
in which numbers and some characteristics, such as missile
throw weight, compensate for technological deficiencies in
their forces. Most important, the buildup of Soviet forces
over the past 15 years has created a situation in which the
US could not plausibly attack the USSR without the virtual
certainty of massive retaliation.
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4. While the Soviets are aware that the converse is
also true, they are conscious of emergent strategic capa-
bilities that could by the early 1980s be perceived to give
the USSR marginal advantages in a central strategic conflict--
for example, active and passive defenses, a survivable
command and control system, and superior countersilo capa-
bilities. Beyond that time frame, however, they are con-
cerned that US progress in areas such as cruise missiles and
advanced ICBMs could work against them should the US suc-
cessfully exploit its present technological advantages.
5. The regional military balances that most concern
the USSR are with Europe and China. In both regions the
Soviets are relatively confident that they possess clear
military superiority, subject to important qualifications.
In Europe, Soviet superiority presupposes successful conduct
of a swiftly initiated offensive drive to the west that
could, however, be thwarted if it triggered large-scale
NATO use of nuclear weapons or if it failed to achieve
victory before NATO could bring its larger economic and
population resources to bear on the course of the war.
In Asia, Soviet military superiority would permit the USSR
to defeat Chinese military forces in a wide range of con-
flict situations. But it could not at the nuclear level
assuredly prevent China from striking a limited number of
Soviet urban areas; nor would it permit the USSR to invade
and occupy central China.
6. The Soviets have made steady progress in building
naval capabilities to operate in the world's oceans beyond
the coastal defense regions traditionally dominant in their
planning. While this effort was driven largely by the pur-
suit of strategic defensive objectives in the central nuclear
competition, it has carried the Soviet Navy to a role of
distant area operations where showing the flag in peacetime
and a contingent capability to disrupt US naval and maritime
operations in the event of hostilities serve Soviet foreign
policy interests.
7. Growing military aid efforts have served as the
main conveyor of Soviet influence into the Third World.
Under permissive conditions, Soviet military assistance
and support to proxies have come to be an effective form
of bringing Soviet power to bear in distant areas. Recent
large-scale support to Cuban expeditionary elements in
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Africa has shown Soviet willingness to press forward, and
to explore the limits of the USSR's ability to project mili-
tary power short of direct combat involvement.
8. The irony of the Soviet military situation overall
is that, on one hand, direct comparison between the USSR
and its major opponents shows the USSR in increasingly favor-
able positions, but, on the other hand, Soviet military doc-
trine and security aspirations continue to present exceed-
ingly heavy demands. Thus, in the strategic nuclear arena,
Soviet doctrine posits the real possibility of a central
nuclear war and of one side prevailing in such a conflict.
This in turn sets to Soviet policy the task of providing
effective war-fighting capabilities, beyond those of pure
deterrence, that are difficult to attain against a deter-
mined opponent. Similarly, unremitting Soviet defense ef-
forts are seen as required for confident superiority over
NATO and, in less degree, over China. The military policy
of the USSR continues to be influenced by a deeply ingrained
tendency to overinsure against perceived foreign threats
and to overcompensate for technological deficiencies. But
no less than these influences, the ambitious standards of
Soviet military doctrine, deriving from tenacious notions
of international competition, drive Soviet military efforts
and sustain Soviet anxiety about prevailing military balances.
9. The Soviets see their growing military strength
in general as providing a favorable backdrop for the con-
duct of foreign policy. It causes the USSR to be perceived
as a natural and legitimate participant in the development
of global and regional security arrangements. Soviet lead-
ers ascribe the progress of Moscow's policy of detente since
the late 1960s in large measure to the growth of their mil-
itary power.
10. Where a palpable Soviet military preponderance
can be achieved, the Soviets believe that it will, over time,
encourage regional actors to seek security arrangements
based on Moscow's good will, with attendant political and
military concessions, especially as the alternatives of
military self-help and countervailing alliances prove less
attractive. They view this as a long-term process best
promoted by persistent diplomatic efforts and the steady
amassing of military strength to alter the security environ-
ment gradually while avoiding unwanted crises. But the
Soviets know that this process is subject to disruption
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by circumstances they can neither foresee nor be wholly
confident they can control. In any crises that may super-
vene, military power is seen by the Soviets as necessary
for defending their interests and for levering crisis solu-
tions in directions acceptable to them.
11. Soviet foreign policy has long displayed both
conservative and assertive behavior. Soviet leaders them-
selves see their foreign policy as essentially revolu-
tionary, resting on the expectation of fundamental changes
in the international system and within the states that
constitute it, and deliberately seeking--though cautiously
and intermittently--to help bring these about. Their
ideology and their experience in world affairs impart to
Soviet leaders a mentality that permits near-term temper-
ance and agile pragmatism to coexist with a deep sense of
manifest destiny for Soviet power in the world. It sus-
tains Soviet policy in steady pursuit of systemic shifts
in the world through small steps, and guards its funda-
mental beliefs against demoralization and massive reap-
praisals in the face of reversals. The Soviets see the
sweep of postwar international affairs as broadly confirm-
ing their convictions about the march of history. Because
their beliefs about the course of world politics have deep
cultural roots and stem from an ideology that confers domes-
tic political legitimacy, even profoundly novel or discon-
certing developments, such as the appearance of nuclear
weapons and the defection of China, have not undermined
their governing orthodoxy.
12. On balance, the performance of Soviet foreign
policy under their rule is rated by present Soviet leaders
as a success, and much of this success is attributed to
the cumulative political impact of growing Soviet military
power. This judgment is drawn in the light of a previous
history of gross inferiority and desperate conditions in
which options for assertive foreign policies were seriously
constrained. Not only did Soviet policy succeed in avert-
ing disastrous possibilities, but it secured acknowledged
coequal superpower status with the United States and moved
the Soviet Union steadily into new areas at relatively
low risk.
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13. Although they expect fluctuations in their for-
tunes abroad, the Soviets still see basic trends in the
world as positive for themselves and negative for the United
States. In seeking to capitalize on these trends, however,
they are beset by problems of various kinds. In areas where
they have actively sought to advance their influence they
have suffered a number of setbacks, some of them very costly.
Events of recent years in Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia pro-
vide examples. Elsewhere, as in Vietnam, Angola, and
Ethiopia, they have been more successful. Although not
oblivious to the costs and risks incurred by these enter-
prises, the Soviets see them as the inevitable accompani-
ment of a forward policy in the Third World.
14. While the Soviets have won recognition as the
strongest military power in Europe and a legitimized role
in the management of European security, they have not
succeeded in winning the full respect for Soviet interests
and preferences that they have sought. Some domestic de-
velopments in Western Europe, particularly the rising for-
tunes of Eurocommunism, give new promise of weakening NATO,
but at a possible cost of further diminishing Soviet in-
fluence over European Communist parties and eventually of
contaminating Eastern Europe.
15. To Soviet leaders the strategic meaning of US-
Soviet detente is the management of change in world politics
in ways that control costs and risks while constraining as
little as possible Soviet efforts to exploit fresh oppor-
tunities for gain. Such processes as the strategic arms
limitation talks (SALT) and US-Soviet cooperation in re-
gional security negotiations allow the superpower competi-
tion to be monitored and modulated. On occasion, they offer
Soviet leaders opportunities for exerting by diplomatic means
influence that might not otherwise be available or require
more costly or risky measures to pursue. These processes
also oblige Soviet leaders to calibrate their own competi-
tive behavior against the risks of disrupting detente,
particularly in areas where core US interests are perceived
to be deeply engaged. This concern does not, however,
appear to have reduced the USSR's willingness to pursue
competitive advantages vigorously in areas such as Africa,
where Moscow may perceive US interests to be less deeply
engaged or US policy more hamstrung by domestic political
constraints.
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16. The Soviets probably expect to continue the mil-
itary programs they have pursued in the last 10 years, with
some marginal shifts in emphasis. They probably expect to
improve somewhat on their present strategic relationship
with the United States, at least temporarily in the period
1980-85; to keep their overall advantages in relation to
China and NATO; and to make steady progress in the kinds
of forces and access necessary for projection of their in-
fluence in third areas.
17. Soviet international behavior in the 1980s is
likely to include a purposeful, cautious exploration of the
political implications of the USSR's increased military
strength. Soviet policy will continue to be competitive
and assertive in most areas of engagement with the West.
In crisis situations, the Soviets are likely to be more
stalwart in defense of their declared interests than they
have been in the past, particularly during the Khrushchev
period. They will probably continue to assert the right
to experiment with unsettled political-military conditions,
as they have recently in Africa, in search of enduring
new beachheads of influence.
18. On the whole, such a prognosis, while projecting
some increase in the assertiveness of Soviet external be-
havior, represents a fairly natural evolution of the USSR's
foreign policy. The changes from past behavior that are
implied are gradual and unbroken, and are rooted in the
basic perceptions and values that have long informed Soviet
policy. It is therefore essentially a prognosis of con-
tinuity, taking into account, however, the greatly enhanced
military capabilities and more insistent claims to a global
role associated with the USSR's emergence as a superpower.
19. Soviet leaders are aware that current trends
they now discern in international relations could be dis-
rupted by large discontinuities they can envisage but not
predict. Among those that would present major challenges
to their interests are: reversion of the US to a "cold
war" posture, large-scale Sino-American military coopera-
tion, new wars in the Middle East or Korea threatening
Soviet-American military confrontation, and widespread
violent upheaval in Eastern Europe. Other abrupt changes
could present major new opportunities: Sino-Soviet accommo-
dation, revolutionary regime changes in Saudi Arabia or
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Iran, and defection from the US alliance system of Japan
or a major West European state. Soviet leaders probably
regard their military investments as both a hedge against
possible adverse contingencies and as providing options
for exploitation of possible windfalls.
20. Soviet leaders are sensitive to a range of domes-
tic problems that seem likely to become aggravated in the
coming decade, but evidently do not now see them as having
the potential to raise challenges of a fundamental kind
to the conduct of their foreign policy. In Soviet condi-
tions, uncertainty, if not crisis, inevitably attends
political succession, which will soon be upon them. Agri-
culture remains a major drag on the economy, serious energy
and manpower problems are looming, and Soviet economic
growth has slowed to the point where it probably already
lags behind the growth in military spending. Far-reaching
solutions to these problems might in the future require
important shifts in the pattern of resource allocations and
corresponding modifications of Soviet foreign and military
policies, but the Soviet leadership as yet shows no signs
it is preparing for radical new departures.
21. During the coming decade a substantial renovation
of the top Soviet leadership is virtually certain. While
the new Soviet leaders will have been promoted from the
same political and social milieu as their predecessors,
generational differences could affect their outlook in ways
important for the future conduct of Soviet foreign and mil-
itary policies. To a successor leadership, the USSR's
superpower status may appear not so much the culmination
of prolonged and costly efforts that must above all be con-
solidated, but as a point of departure from which to exert
more pervasive leverage on world affairs. Alternatively,
but less likely, younger leaders, lacking the conditioning
preoccupation of their elders with the experience of con-
fronting external threats from stronger opponents, may be
inclined to give overriding priority to the solution of
internal problems which their predecessors allowed to ac-
cumulate.
22. In any event, the new leaders, relatively inex-
perienced in managing the USSR's external affairs, will
be impressionable in the early post-Brezhnev years and
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strongly influenced by their perceptions of the opportuni-
ties and risks of more venturesome foreign policies, on one
hand, and of the costs and benefits of seeking more coopera-
tive relations with the West, on the other. The quality
and effectiveness of US international policies, particularly
in areas of defense, in alliance cohesion, and in the Third
World, are likely to be the principal external factor shaping
the perceptions of new Soviet leaders.
The Director, Bureau of Intelligence and Re-
search, Department of State, agrees with the general
thrust of this Estimate that the USSR will continue
to insist on being treated as a military coequal of
the United States and that it will be no easier--
indeed, perhaps more difficult--to deal with in the
coming decade. However, he believes this Estimate
tends to overemphasize the Soviets' perceptions of
their own military power and undervalues political
and economic considerations.
Specifically, the Director, INR, believes that
the Soviets have a less positive, even more ambiva-
lent view of the military balance in Europe and
would be less confident of the superiority of the
Warsaw Pact's forces over those of NATO than the
net judgments of the Estimate suggest. INR believes
that, in assessing the balance in Europe, the So-
viets are very conservative in their calculations
and make a number of assumptions which highlight
their own weaknesses and Western strengths; the
Soviets have greater fear of Western attack than
the Estimate suggests. For these reasons, INR
would draw the following implications of Soviet
perceptions of the European balance:
-- INR believes that Soviet programs to im-
prove tactical aviation, upgrade armored
forces, and enhance tactical nuclear
capabilities are intended to remedy what
Moscow evidently regards as weaknesses
rather than to maintain or enlarge exist-
ing advantages. if so, Soviet motives
would appear to be more compelling than
the text suggests, and Moscow's efforts
may be more intense.
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-- We doubt that the Soviets consider them-
selves to be in an appreciably better posi-
tion militarily--and hence possibly more
inclined--than they were 15 years ago to
Zink a crisis in a third area to Europe.
In terms of strategy, Moscow could easily
manage to assemble a much superior force
against the Western garrisons in Berlin,
just as it could have done in earlier
decades; moreover, the Soviet reckoning of
the results of escalating such a localized
confrontation would not be very different
from what it was before. The Soviets
would still have to count on the dangers
of a major engagement of large ground forces
and its potential for escalation to one
or another degree of nuclear warfare.
In addition, INR would note that the arms control
motives attributed to the Soviets in the Estimate are
essentially those which would apply to any participant
in arms control negotiations. For example, they reflect
a desire to prevent or slow the competition in areas
where they are disadvantaged, and the desire to trade
minimal restraint on their side for maximum restraint
on the other. The Soviets probably see a range of
potential benefits--political and economic as well as
military--in arms control. At the same time, however,
they also realize that there are practical limits to
what arms control negotiations can accomplish.
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1. In the 61st year of its existence the USSR is
pursuing a foreign policy of global dimensions and, by its
own ascription, revolutionary purpose. At the same time,
it has accumulated military capabilities that make it the
strongest single state of Eurasia and a nuclear superpower
on a par with the United States; it continues to acquire
even greater military strength. The essential question
of this Estimate is how the present leaders of the Soviet
Union currently perceive and, in the future, expect these
two phenomena to interrelate: How do Soviet leaders assess
the value of their multifaceted military power in terms of
their international political aspirations and activities?
How does this assessment influence their military, foreign
policy, and crisis management decisions? What trends or
future changes does this assessment foresee? During the
next decade, how are their successors likely to view these
matters?
2. Attempts to understand the international behavior
of the USSR raise these questions for two reasons. Despite
fluctuations in its foreign policy priorities and strategic
position, the USSR, under a succession of leaders, has per-
sisted in asserting the self-appointed revolutionary role
with which it entered on the world scene. That role involves
abetting, exploiting, and presiding over processes of systemic
change in world politics. The Soviet Union's choice of policy
tactics and the constraints on its behavior, however, have
been subject to change. On occasion, Soviet leaders have
sought to tranquilize crucial and potentially revolutionary,
but also potentially very dangerous, conflict arenas, as in
Europe. The role and self-image of the USSR as an interna-
tional actor, however, define the relationship of the USSR
to the other major actors of the international system in
essentially combative terms. It is symptomatic that the
language of politics used by Soviet leaders at home and
abroad is the language of struggle, even where the struggle
is avowedly for peace.
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3. A second major reason for concentrating on how
Soviet military power relates to Soviet foreign policy is
that military power has become the USSR's principal asset
in international affairs. It is surely not the only asset.
The sheer weight of the USSR's geopolitical base and its
control of the world's second largest economy, coupled with
its self-identification as the spearhead of forces destined
to transform the international system, would accord it
status as a major world actor even were its military capa-
bilities less broadly developed. But in these dimensions
of power, the USSR is either not unique or no longer widely
respected. As realists, Soviet leaders appreciate that
nonmilitary forms of power at their disposal to shape the
international environment are comparatively weak. The
Soviet economy's rate of growth has been slowing steadily
since the 1960s and is approaching that of the advanced
capitalist world at a time when Soviet per capita produc-
tion still lags behind. Outside Eastern Europe, Soviet
economic and technological leverage abroad is highly cir-
cumstantial, where it exists, and generally rivaled even
by that of lesser capitalist states. Bonds of cultural
and national affinity with other countries are few, of
marginal significance, and, even where once strong and use-
ful, are now sorely frayed by painful experiences.
4. A special source of distress to Soviet leaders is
the waning of the USSR's ideological-political magnetism in
the world at large. Now Soviet ideologues must grapple
with the awkward task of explaining why political currents
"objectively" disruptive of capitalist or "neocolonial"
societies are vocally anti-Soviet and why states that claim
to be Marxist-Leninist do not accept the USSR as a model
of development.
5. As the USSR has lagged in economic growth and
become a less potent ideological force in the world, its
military assets have acquired sharply increased importance.
It is primarily the USSR's striking achievement in building
military might that accords it superpower status. The So-
viet leaders are not, and could hardly be, party to the view
that other factors, such as crosscurrents in the evolution
of a new world economic system, are acquiring a fundamentally
dominant role, are immune to strategic influences, and per-
force leave them out of the picture. They are sensitive to
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these factors and about their limited influence on them. But
they see them as part of a historically evolving process in
which essential motives remain political--how states and
interstate systems are organized and who is in charge--and
which is driven by conflict involving the use of force or
conducted in its shadow.
6. Granted that military power has acquired even
greater importance for the Soviet leaders, how, when, and
with what consequence is it instrumental in their foreign
policy? Any attempt to answer these difficult questions
requires reconstructing a complex, imprecise set of precepts,
attitudes, perceptions, inclinations, and moods of those
leaders. These insights do not spring automatically from
the pages of Lenin's writings, or Pravda, or Red Star. Nor
can they be read directly from Soviet actions in foreign
and military policy areas. These sources offer only con-
tributions to inference that necessarily relies heavily on
collective expertise and experience with regard to the
essential character of the Soviet system.
7. Decisions at the intersection of Soviet foreign
policy and military power are made by a small, secretive
group of men. Their views and deliberations are penetrated
with extreme rarity. In contrast to other areas, such as
economic policy, or even military doctrine, these views are
not surrounded by a reflective or "scientific" body of offi-
cial public thought that can illuminate the assessments made
by insiders. Except for vague, if suggestive, observations
by civilian and military academics, the USSR has not dis-
closed and probably has not developed anything like the
elaborate theoretical and historical literature found in the
West on the political role of its own military power, on
power perceptions, on crisis management, on escalation
dynamics, on bargaining with explicit or implicit threat of
force, etc. When, from time to time, one observes a cer-
tain reflection of such Western concepts in Soviet doctrine
or practice, it is usually with a distinctive Soviet style
and seems to reflect the logic of the situation more than
conscious emulation. Soviet recognition of various scenarios
for limited conventional, and perhaps nuclear, conflict is
an example of this.
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8. In attempting to deal with the questions of how
Soviet military power relates to its foreign policy, we are
obliged by the limits of evidence as well as the nature of
the problem to grope for a somewhat synthetic representa-
tion of views ascribed to a collective leadership, recog-
nizing that different elements of the leadership may see
things differently and that actual policy-must be adjusted
to widely differing conditions. Moreover, a general under-
standing of Soviet attitudes toward the political value of
military power can hardly be a basis for predicting specific
Soviet behavior on arms or diplomacy. At most it may pro-
vide insight into which classes of behavior to expect and
which not to expect over time.
9. An Estimate of this sort requires a brief statement
on the role that ideology and ultimate goals play in the
behavior of Soviet leaders. Soviet Marxism-Leninism is a
sclerotic derivation of a 19th-century theory of social de-
velopment, a modern civil religion grafted onto particularly
receptive elements of Russian political culture, and many
other things. It is not a blueprint for world conquest. Nor
is it only a remembered phenomenon, long worn away by cynicism,
pragmatism, or--as Peking would have it--revisionism. It
retains something of its vitality despite the years of ero-
sion. It continues to inform a world view that strongly
influences how Soviet leaders think, particularly about mat-
ters beyond their immediate operational concern, such as
the future of world politics or the balance of power. It
inculcates a predisposition to see power relationships as
unstable, transitory, and conflict prone, and to take a long
view of their development. While the Soviet world view re-
jects mythic glorification of violence, it expects violence
within and among states to occur and accepts it as the mid-
wife of progress. Although endorsing political compromise
as a worthy tactical means of averting new threats and con-
solidating progress already registered, it tends to see
progress in terms of the victory of ordained forces over
those that must eventually be discarded as reactionary.
10. Equally important, Soviet ideology, even in its
presently attenuated form, shapes the political character
and operational code of Soviet leaders. It obliges them to
justify the authority they exercise by loyalty to its
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precepts and by commitment to a mission of global transforma-
tion. And it creates for them standards of appropriate be-
havior toward the outside world.
11. The life experience of the present generation of
Soviet leaders, spanning the emergence of the Soviet state
from besieged pariah status to that of a universally acknowl-
edged and globally engaged superpower, reinforces the basic
historical optimism of their doctrine. Coupled with the
long view fostered by their ideology, that experience also
counsels patience, perseverance, and unremitting effort,
helping to account for the dogged determination and per-
sistence of Soviet international behavior in the face of a
mixed record of advances and reverses.
12. At the same time, their ideology permits, indeed
obliges, Soviet leaders to make whatever tactical compromises
are required to conduct the struggle in reasonable safety.
This mixture of strategic purposefulness and tactical per-
missiveness frequently licenses ruthlessly flexible policies.
It also leaves plenty of room for momentum, drift, ambivalence,
and plain indecision, however, precisely because it does
not automatically make tough decisions for Soviet leaders.
II. THE THRUST OF CURRENT SOVIET MILITARY POLICY
A. Legacy of the Postwar Strategic Effort
13. Acquiring a competitive strategic position vis-a-vis
the United States was an uphill struggle for the Soviets.
This experience left them with an abiding respect for US
technological and industrial capabilities, when mobilized
as they were in successive periods of the 1950s and 1960s.
This is an enduring legacy. But it would be a mistake to
read into Soviet minds from this experience a permanent stra-
tegic inferiority complex. Over the long pull they could see
themselves improving their relative position in the very gross
terms that apply to overall weapons technical competence.
Moreover, the Soviets could and did apply their own, often
less elegant, solutions to their strategic problems.
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14. Politically, they learned from their years of
strategic inferiority that the readiness of the United
States to use its military power directly against Soviet
interests far from matched what the Soviets tended to be-
lieve US power should allow or what characteristic "im-
perialist aggressiveness" would dictate. Employing various
rationalizations to explain this, such as the presence of
"progressive forces" or "sober realists" in the West, the
Soviets came to the practical conclusion that avoidance of
blatant provocation and a deft diplomacy could constrain
the competiveness of the United States in the larger stra-
tegic arena. While displayed earlier even in some of
Stalin's behavior, this Soviet recognition was most dramat-
ically expressed by Khrushchev in 1956 when he asserted
that the revolutionary struggle would go on, but that a new
world war could be averted. It also led to the consistent
juxtaposition of Soviet military strength and the "peace
policy of the USSR" as instruments for preventing nuclear
war and extending Soviet influence in the world.
15. Throughout the postwar period,.the Soviets have
variously experimented with manipulating the image of their
military strength by political means. Khrushchev demon-
strated the limits and dangers of exaggeration, which, with
few exceptions, his successors have forsworn. To some
extent post-Khrushchev leaders continue to be insensitive
to the prospect that Soviet strategic behavior will be seen
as threatening and provocative by the United States. But
they have on the whole deliberately avoided provocative
claims, preferring rather to encourage a generalized respect
for Soviet strength and permitting the observed facts to
speak for themselves.
16. Strategic nuclear deterrence has from the beginning
been the first objective of Soviet military and foreign
policy in that the preferred course of East-West competi-
tion in any form did not include a nuclear war. But this
objective has not led the Soviets to embrace mutual assured
destruction as the doctrinal underpinning of their strategic
policy or to design forces optimized for punishing an at-
tacker at the expense of reducing their capabilities for
conducting military operations against enemy forces. The
legacy of past strategic inferiority, along with ideologi-
cal, historical, and institutional factors, has helped to
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make forces for the conduct of war--that is, war-fighting
capabilities--the central preoccupation of Soviet force de-
signers. This is not simply because they see war-fighting
forces as the best deterrent. Soviet determination, within
the limits of economic and technological constraints, to
deploy forces suitable for waging war successfully appears
to result from straightforward reasoning which holds that
deterrence may fail and that the responsibility of the state
is to be as well prepared as possible for that eventuality.
There is some evidence that Khrushchev, after his exaggerated
strategic claims were exposed by US intelligence in the
early 1960s, may have toyed with minimum deterrence or "pure
punishment" concepts, at least as a temporary expedient. If
so, his heirs rejected this view. They evidently concluded
from the experiences of the Khrushchev era, particularly the
Cuban missile crisis, that the level of perceived Soviet
strategic power required as the backdrop for an assertive
and globally engaged foreign policy could not be provided
by a minimum deterrent.
17. Khrushchev claimed a strategic deterrent capability
against the United States well before he had a credible
basis for doing so. In the 1970s, Soviet leaders have oc-
casionally attempted to reassure the United States that the
USSR possesses and seeks no more than deterrent capabilities.
Whatever their validity as a reflection of real Soviet
thinking, these statements in the prevailing strategic con-
text convey a genuine confidence, not attributable to
Khrushchev's earlier claims. When this transition took
place is impossible to specify reliably from Soviet public
claims, given their varying manipulative purposes. It ap-
pears most likely to have occurred in the mid- to late 1960s,
when Soviet military planners began to give serious atten-
tion to the possibility of extensive conventional conflict
in Europe. This attention, although partly induced by NATO
policy shifts and still influenced by the judgment that
nuclear escalation remains highly likely in a central Euro-
pean war, signified the beginnings of a belief that Soviet
strategic forces could possibly prevent US resort to nuclear
weapons even in the most strained circumstances. It is clear
now that Soviet military planners are studying and exer-
cising concepts of limited nuclear war that would involve
some ingredients of tacit collaboration to control damage
and escalation. But the experience of coming up from behind,
along with an ideological image of a perfidious enemy, has
made these concepts difficult for the Soviets to embrace.
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18. Doctrines and perceptions can be altered, as the
history of Soviet strategic behavior has demonstrated. In-
stitutions are more tenacious. One of the more enduring
legacies of the postwar era for the USSR was the development
of an elaborate, growing, and relatively stable set of in-
terlocking military, industrial, scientific, and party organs
and personnel involved in defense matters. This military-
industrial apparatus weighs heavily in the Soviet decision
process with regard to resource allocations and military
policy itself. On foreign policy issues, such as SALT, it
also clearly plays a major role. And it must be counted as
a factor in the politics of leadership succession. The co-
hesiveness and political power of this apparatus does not
outweigh the authority of a united party leadership, with
which it is, in any case, closely integrated at the highest
level. But it is larger and more entrenched today than in
the period from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, when
Khrushchev carried through major innovations, such as creat-
ing the Strategic Rocket Forces and making large cuts in
military manpower.. The next succession is likely to lead
to a further strengthening of the influence of this ap-
paratus, at least temporarily, until a new leadership consoli-
dates it position.
19. The expansion of military capabilities that the
USSR has been conducting since the early 1960s has been
(a) costly at a time of reduced economic growth (defense
expenditures are estimated to be at least 11 to 13 percent
of GNP); (b) steady on the whole, involving an average
annual rate of growth in outlays of 4 to 5 percent over the
last decade; and (c) comprehensive in that all Soviet mili-
tary force elements have profited, although in varying de-
grees, from a policy of "balanced force development."
20. This brief section will offer only the most cursory
review of Soviet military programs; these are covered in de-
tail in NIE 11-3/8-77 and in other intelligence publications.*
It will concentrate on attempting to elucidate the purposes
See NIE 11-3/8-77, Soviet Capabilities for Strategic Nuclear
Conflict Through the Late*1980s, 21 February 1978; NIE
4-1-78, Warsaw Pact Concepts and Capabilities for Going to
War in Europe: Implications for NATO Warning of War, 10 April
1978; NIE 11-10-78, Soviet Capabilities for Distant Military
Operations (forthcoming); NIE 11-14-78, Warsaw Pact Forces
Opposite NATO (forthcoming); NIO IIM 76-039J: Trends in
Soviet Military Programs, October 1976; NIO IIM 77-029J:
Soviet Civil Defense: Objectives, Pace, and Effectiveness,
December 1977; and SR 77-10100, The Balance of Forces in
Central Europe, August 1977.
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the Soviets ascribe to these programs, and the assessments
they make of them; to seek out possible synergistic relation-
ships among them, and to weigh generally the Soviet view
of the role of the USSR in war and peace.
B. Strategic Nuclear Forces
21. After more than a decade of quantitative expansion
of strategic forces (continuing in a new class of mobile
MIRVed IRBMs, the Backfire bomber, and in SLBMs, with cor-
responding reductions under'SALT of older ICBMs), the Soviets
are now well into an extensive modernization of existing
forces, involving primarily replacements of third-generation
with fourth-generation MIRVed ICBMs with improved accuracy,
throw weight, flexibility, and survivability. Evidence of
R&D being conducted on future strategic systems strongly
indicates that Soviet leaders expect this broadly based and
vigorous campaign of force improvement to continue well into
the 1980s at least.
22. To some extent, the variety of weapon systems
involved in this force modernization campaign may be ex-
plained by the presence of the large and powerful Soviet
military-industrial apparatus. But the character and vigor
of these programs are largely a function of military poli-
cies and doctrines that trace back to the early 1960s when,
having begun to create the technological and industrial
base for a competent strategic arsenal, the Soviets deter-
mined that the criteria for building such an arsenal had
to be military capabilities for waging central nuclear war
as successfully as possible. Today the Soviets are either
deploying, modernizing, or conducting substantial R&D on
all elements of a strategic war-fighting potential:
-- Hard-target and other offensive counterforce
capabilities.
-- Survivable retaliatory forces.
-- Defenses against low-level penetrating aerodynamic
vehicles.
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-- Capabilities for strategic antisubmarine war-
fare (ASW).
-- Antiballistic missile (ABM) capabilities.
-- Strategic warning and surveillance.
-- Survivable command and control.
-- Antisatellite capabilities.
-- Civil defenses.
23. Soviet leaders and military planners adhere to the
belief that a sensible strategic force posture must attempt
to provide for the survival of the society and the regime in
a nuclear war by destroying, defending against, or limiting
the effects of the enemy's damage-making potential. They ap-
preciate that merely having programs in all the militarily
logical areas of activity required by this concept is not
enough. They must be effective. And Soviet leaders also
know that in many of the areas in which their doctrine requires
them to be strong, present and potential Soviet forces are
seriously deficient--for example, in low-altitude air defense,
ASW, and ABMs. Moreover, over time the United States clearly
will have numerous possibilities for negating Soviet war-
fighting force improvements achieved at great cost. The
dominant characteristic of Soviet strategic force policy and
planning is a pervasive willingness to accept this challenge
of the military dialectic. At its root has been not so much
confidence in the prospects for achieving militarily decisive
preponderance, but rather an unwillingness to rely wholly
on the obvious alternatives in the long run, namely on main-
taining a purely deterrent posture, or ending the strategic
competition by arms control agreement. These alternatives
may be temporarily imposed by events or temporarily accepted
for purposes of controlling the course of competition. But
in the long run, they are seen as mortgaging Soviet strategic
security and leverage to basically hostile and unreliable
enemies. These enemies include not merely the United States,
but its allies, a hostile China, and potential nuclear powers.
24. Arms control negotiations and agreements (such
as in the SALT and comprehensive test ban arenas) are one
means the Soviets use in their efforts to modulate the
strategic competition. To them, these vehicles offer the
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possibility of preventing or slowing competition in certain
areas for a fixed or indefinite period of time where the
Soviets are for the time being disadvantaged and particularly
for impeding the translation of US technological advantages
into operational military systems. ABM limitations are the
foremost example. In areas where competition continues, SALT
is also meant by the Soviets to nurture a political process
within the United States that constrains American strategic
programs and a bargaining relationship in negotiations that
trades Soviet restraint (as little as possible) for US
restraint (as much as possible). In addition to its political
benefits for other aspects of US-Soviet relations, SALT is
valued by Soviet leaders for the range of potential strategic
services it can perform: from helping the USSR to avoid set-
backs in, to limit some costs incurred by, and, at the extreme,
to assist the Soviet Union to gain significant advantages in
the strategic arms competition. The present Soviet leadership
does not believe that SALT can halt the strategic arms
competition or cause the US-Soviet strategic relationship to
be characterized more by mutual tolerance and stability than
by competition.*
25. The Soviets' views on how a central nuclear war
might originate and how it should be conducted, as best we
can discern them, are a pragmatic reflection of their prevail-
ing war-fighting doctrine. There is no evidence or reasonable
set of inferences that support the notion of their deciding to
launch a surprise strategic attack simply because their force
balance calculations at some point indicated they could do so
and prevail according to some predetermined technical criteria.
At the same time, having emerged unscathed from two decades of
cold war against a vastly superior US nuclear opponent, in the
present radically improved strategic circumstances they now
regard the United States as reliably deterred from a bolt-
from-the-blue attack. Rather, the Soviets see a situation
threatening the outbreak of central nuclear war as emerging
potentially out of escalating US efforts to resist or reverse
adverse military or political developments initiated or
supported by the USSR. In these circumstances, the Soviets
' For a dissenting view on paragraph 24 from the Director,
Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State,
see the end of the Key Judgments.
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see any decision to go to nuclear war as being forced on
them by accumulating signs that war is coming, clear signs
that the United States (or another nuclear enemy) is about
to strike, or tactical warning that an attack is under way.
Then the task of strategy is to make the best of it: to pre-
empt or launch on warning if possible--or retaliate if neces-
sary--against a range of countermilitary and command, control,
and communications facilities in order to disrupt enemy offen-
sive operations; to attack war-supporting facilities, industries,
and political centers; and to defend actively and passively
against what cannot be destroyed at a distance.
26. Although from a purely military point of view
the Soviets see successful preemption as more desirable than
riding out an initial attack, they recognize that capabilities
to survive and retaliate against a surprise attack are neces-
sary, because decisive warning is not a certainty. They also
clearly have long understood the relationship between alert-
ness, survivability, and deterrence, but that relationship does
not dominate Soviet strategic thinking as much as it does the
American.
27. If the Soviets have explicit concepts for using
strategic forces, short of active employment, to influence
political and military interactions during crisis or conflicts
at lower levels, they are not known to us. It is not the
style of the current regime, nor would present Soviet leaders
likely feel the need to engage in Khrushchevian rocket
rattling during a major international crisis. Since the
Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the USSR has never publicly
declared alert measures for its strategic forces, and those
few undeclared alerts that were taken on subsequent occasions
were on a very low key. In applying military pressure to a
crisis situation, the present Soviet leadership is likely
to follow the pattern hinted (but not clearly displayed) in
the Middle East war of 1973: to induce an acceptable crisis
resolution by leading with the threat of direct local interven-
tion, leaving implicit the threat of possible strategic escala-
tion if execution of the threat is resisted militarily. Where
credible Soviet local intervention capabilities are available,
the Soviets would probably prefer to threaten action well be-
low the threshold of strategic warfare in order to make
escalatory nuclear counterthreats seem both disproportionate
to the provocation offered and--in the face of Soviet strate-
gic power--too risky to employ.
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28. The Soviets place varying degrees of credence in
the ability of their strategic power to deter escalation of
conflict to the strategic level. Thus, local conventional
conflicts, conventional conflict in Europe, and even some
limited exchanges of tactical nuclear weapons between super-
power forces appear to have some plausibility in Soviet plan-
ning, which can be gleaned from both writings and exercises.
But Soviet thinking on escalation control, especially at the
higher levels of violence, is ambivalent and still heavily
weighted toward the view that escalation of superpower mili-
tary conflict is highly likely.
29. Soviet military doctrine presents a notable
contradiction that makes it difficult to understand what
Soviet thinking on nuclear crisis management might involve
at the threshold of strategic conflict. If strategic con-
flict were to approach observably in a period of rising
tension affording political-strategic warning, not only
Soviet but Western forces would be alerted and generated.
This would markedly lower the advantages to the Soviet side
of preemption, seizure of the tactical initiative, decep-
tion, and other classical military maneuvers that are highly
touted in Soviet strategic theory. In a real crisis, it is
likely that Soviet decisionmakers would behave with the
greatest of caution in handling and threatening the use
of their strategic weapons.
30. The Soviets perceive their strategic power as
playing a variety of political roles in the current environ-
ment. It is the basis for their status as a superpower and
therefore gains for them the right to participate in the
management of major regional and global security issues,
as well as claims on the careful attention of the United
States in bilateral dealings. Soviet leaders are notably
irritated when they sense any depreciation of these claims
on the grounds that their power is really not that great
or all that relevant. But they seem, on the whole, fairly
confident that it cannot be ignored. They see their stra-
tegic power as having forced the United States and its allies
to see the need for broad cooperation with the USSR in security
matters, thereby opening the way to detente and making their
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"peace policy" workable. Like Khrushchev, but for different
and better strategic reasons, they claim that Soviet strategic
power contributes broadly to the prevention or spoiling of
imperialist intervention against struggling nationalist and
progressive movements. It is not evident that the Soviets
take special pains to project their strategic power image
to specific regional audiences. They appear willing to rely
on a generalized image of Soviet strength that originates
with official American assessments and circulates throughout
the non-Communist world.
31. The Soviets are well advanced on the strategic
deployments laid down in their 1976-80 five-year defense plan
and have begun to define plans for the following half decade.
We expect they will continue to pursue a more capable strategic
force through greater numbers of weapons, higher weapons ac-
curacy and reliability, enhanced survivability, and more pro-
ficient command and control. In this period the Soviets will
for the first time acquire significant land-mobile strategic
missile forces--IRBMs and, depending on SALT constraints,
possibly ICBMs. A large new ballistic missile submarine is
expected, and possibly a new heavy bomber as well. Un-
doubtedly the Soviets will give major attention to improving
their air defenses against low-altitude penetrators, especially
against cruise missiles and their launch platforms; they will
continue to invest heavily in R&D on ballistic missile and
antisubmarine warfare technology.
32. Soviet strategic force policy is designed to im-
prove the USSR's capabilities for strategic nuclear conflict
according to the demanding criteria of Soviet doctrine. It
is a policy configured for a spectrum of possible future stra-
tegic relationships with the United States first of all, and
also with US allies and China. Soviet strategic policy should
not be thought of as a single-minded pursuit of a specified
fixed balance by a given time in the proximate future. The
Soviets know that under the best of circumstances the future
is too uncertain for that. Their policy is designed to
produce high confidence that the United States could not
deprive the USSR of the general status of parity or equality
it now enjoys, to provide a reasonable prospect of improv-
ing on that condition in ways that could offer political
benefits not readily defined, and to offer some possibility
that familiar as well as more radical technologies could
impart to the USSR a decisive war-fighting advantage in an
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indeterminate future. Force improvement programs that
stick to the war-fighting track of doctrine and present a
spectrum of favorable possibilities distinctly more likely
than unfavorable ones are in accord with established Soviet
policy and practice.
C. Forces for the European Theater*
33. It has long been Soviet policy to acquire and
retain in Central Europe a preponderance of ground and tacti-
cal air forces for theater warfare. Particularly since the
mid-1960s, this policy has occasioned the expansion and
modernization of conventional, theater nuclear, and peripheral
strategic strike forces. In support of this effort, the So-
viets have also enhanced the capabilities of the general
purpose naval forces assigned to their three European fleet
areas. The Soviets originally sought and largely achieved
quantitative superiority over NATO and have now achieved
qualitative competitiveness in most major weapon systems.
Part of the force improvements seen since the mid-1960s
can be attributed to efforts designed to correct deficien-
cies that were permitted to develop during the Khrushchev
years. The need to place large forces opposite China added
to the total cost of these efforts. Control of Eastern
Europe continued to be a major concern of Soviet political
and military leaders, but the sizing and mix of Soviet
forces oriented toward Europe have been governed by the pur-
suit of an offensive, war-winning dominance in the theater.
34. The Soviets now probably believe that their mili-
tary forces in Europe provide them with a "winning combina-
tion" in the special sense of having a better-than-even
chance (1) of winning a decisive victory over NATO on
German territory in a short conventional war in which
they seized the initiative early, and (2) of prevailing--
however more ambiguously because more destructively--if
a conventional war in Europe were to lead to the widespread
* For a dissenting view on this discussion of Soviet forces
for the European theater, see the comments by the Director,
Bureau of InteZZigence and Research, Department of State,
at the end of the Key Judgments.
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use of nuclear weapons yet not involve massive attacks on
Soviet territory. This is a kind of theater superiority,
and, judged by the economic costs incurred in its pursuit,
it is valued as such by the Soviets. It is highly qualified,
however, by'the grave risks of nuclear escalation and by
the possible danger of becoming bogged down in a prolonged
war of attrition.
35. It is these considerations that produce an evident
ambivalence in Soviet assessments of the European balance.
The Soviets perceive their superiority and display little
fear that NATO could at the outset of war unleash a success-
ful offensive against the Pact. Yet they understand that
their preferred formula for victory is complicated and
highly scenario-dependent, and they worry constantly about
improving their posture. They look to redundant theater
and peripheral strike nuclear forces to deter, and if neces-
sary to preempt or counter, nuclear escalation. They give
great attention in their exercises to rapidly assuming the
offensive.
36. The Soviets are vocally apprehensive that im-
provements in NATO's capabilities in tactical air forces,
antitank weapons, enhanced radiation weapons, readiness,
and disposition could blunt Soviet advantages in the region.
But they appear determined to match and counter any such
improvements and if possible to enlarge their margin of
advantage.
37. The Soviet force posture in Europe is based on
the political judgment that war could occur, and on the
military judgment that, if it did, they should be prepared
to achieve a quick victory. Were such a victory denied
them, they would have to conduct military operations with
an uncertainly reliable rear in Eastern Europe. Moreover,
if NATO's mobilization base remained intact, NATO's superior
strength in population and industry might eventually grind
down Soviet forces in a protracted conflict or force the
decision on nuclear escalation onto the Soviet side.
38. Even apart from the danger of the outbreak of
war, the Soviets would probably not regard a purely de-
fensive military posture in Europe as having sufficient
political weight in peacetime. Their image of preponderant
military strength on the continent gives them a weighty-role
in European security affairs, and, over time, makes that
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role seem natural to all involved. The Soviets probably
see their offensive power in Europe as a necessary deterrent
against intolerable political and military developments
that might impact on Soviet interests or alter the balance
of power in Europe and give rise to new dangers to Soviet
security. At the same time, however, they wish to appear
strong without appearing threatening, lest NATO's poten-
tial strength be marshaled. So long as Soviet leaders
perceive NATO, and West Germany in particular, as capable
of being galvanized, this objective inhibits them from
engaging in tactics of direct military pressure and con-
frontation against NATO in pursuit of marginal or temporary
advantages.
39. A major East-West military crisis has not occurred
in Europe since the early 1960s, notwithstanding some
anxiety at the time of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Thus, the political and military implications of the more
favorable force balance that the USSR has created in Europe
in the past decade have not been tested under conditions of
severe stress. How the Soviets perceived and exploited
those implications would no doubt depend heavily on the lo-
cation and political content of events that caused a Euro-
pean crisis. Caution about provoking or intensifying an
East-West military confrontation would probably continue
to characterize Soviet behavior, although, once committed,
Soviet leaders may be less willing than in the past to re-
treat from contested positions.
40. Nevertheless, the chosen posture and operational
doctrine of the Warsaw Pact would create a serious dilemma
for Soviet leaders in managing a crisis in which they felt
the need to threaten offensive action or perceived that war
was somehow likely to occur. As in the case of their stra-
tegic doctrine, their seizing the initiative effectively is
favored by the opponent's not being in a high state of
readiness. Yet NATO would be given warning by a mounting
political-military crisis, especially if the Soviets were
threatening offensive action as a means of leverage to re-
solve it favorably. The prospect of a wasting military ad-
vantage alone would probably not be sufficient to overcome
the Soviet leadership's propensity to behave with great
caution and restraint, especially in a European crisis.
But in combination with a weighty Soviet political interest
that might not be secured without military action, the pres-
ent Soviet military posture in Europe could generate power-
ful pressures to seize the initiative and undertake rapid
offensive action.
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41. Whether or how Soviet leaders think about the
potential problem of crisis management arising from their
military doctrine and force posture in Europe is not clear.
For the present it appears likely that they will maintain
the policies of the past decade, continuously modernizing
their own and their allies' forces to keep, and if possible
to add to, the advantages designed to yield a victory in
a quick offensive conflict. NATO's planned force improve-
ments, if implemented, will make this a more difficult task,
never susceptible to fully satisfactory accomplishment;
but neither NATO military improvements of the kind now pro-
gramed nor force reduction formulas of the kind that have
been advanced by the West are in themselves likely to dis-
suade Soviet leaders from pursuing their present military
policies in Europe. Even if pressed by demographic and
economic factors to consider cutbacks in military manpower
levels, the Soviets will probably remain highly conservative
in their calculations of what they might give up in force
reductions. While demographic and economic factors may
constrain the total size of Soviet forces on a national
basis, it seems unlikely that the pinch would be so severe
as to compel the Soviets to want to cut their forces in
the NATO center region.
D. Forces Against China
.42. During the last dozen years the Soviets have
increased their Far Eastern forces to more than 40 divisions,
together with appropriate tactical air and air defense ele-
ments. They have augmented air and missile nuclear strike
capabilities targeted against US forces in the Far East,
and have deployed some ICBMs which are targetable against
China as well as the United States. The increased targeting
flexibility of ICBMs and SLBMs makes them available for em-
ployment against China. In addition, new peripheral strike
systems, such as the SS-20 mobile IRBM, are being added to
the forces opposite China.
43. Soviet military policy against China may be char-
acterized as one of containment with a variety of limited
objective offensive options. As distinguished from Soviet
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deployments in Europe, those against China incorporate fixed
fortifications for defense. The Soviets clearly have sought a
capability at all key points along the lengthy Sino-Mongolian-
Soviet border to halt and punish local Chinese incursions
and to discourage the concentration of Chinese forces near
Soviet borders. They have constructed formidable regional
defenses in the Maritime Province (Primorskiy Kray) against
major Chinese ground attacks, and they have the capability
to launch major regional offensives against Manchuria,
Sinkiang, and the Peking area. In a large-scale land war,
the Soviets might attempt to occupy major regions adjacent
to the border, but would almost certainly not attempt to
occupy central China. In a major war that went badly, the
Soviets would be hard pressed to initiate the use of tacti-
cal nuclear weapons, especially in support of their ground
forces; in that case, they would also be inclined simultaneously
to launch preemptive attacks against the modest Chinese
nuclear strike forces, and would consider the option of
destroying major elements of China's industrial base.
44. Numerous statements have been made by informed
Soviets that attest to a belief that China possesses a small
but significant nuclear deterrent. How Soviet leaders per-
ceive the military capabilities conferred by China's nuclear
Nevertheless, the Soviets are probably
close enough to a damage-denying capability against China
by means of a carefully executed attack on China's nuclear
sites, to have strong incentives to launch such an attack
in a major conflict, especially one that was not going well
for the USSR.
45. The Soviets seem convinced that their powerful
military position versus the Chinese is essential to pre-
vent major trouble on the border and to inhibit anti-Soviet
actions by China in other regions of Sino-Soviet rivalry.
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A less formidable Soviet posture would probably not, in
Soviet eyes, lead to more congenial Chinese behavior,
but would rather feed Chinese political ambitions and
military pretensions. In any renewed test of will and strength
on the border, the Soviets would undoubtedly react vigorously
to a perceived military challenge. They would probably be
very careful, however, about mounting threats against China
in the absence of open provocation. This is because they
appear to lack assurance that they understand Chinese mo-
tivation and attribute to the Chinese a propensity to react
forcefully, even from a sense of weakness and vulnerability.
46. The present course of the Soviet leadership ap-
pears to be to retain indefinitely the clear preponderance
of military capability the USSR enjoys over China by con-
tinuing steadily to modernize the forces deployed in the
Far East.
E. Military Instruments for Distant Power Projection
47. The military reach of Stalin'?s Soviet Union was
limited to its Eurasian periphery. This began to change
meaningfully around a decade after World War II, which had
undermined long-established colonial empires. Khrushchev,
with characteristic overconfidence, trusted to a largely
spontaneous political process to swing the ""national
liberation movement" of the Third World toward the Soviet
orbit. Coups, wars, political betrayal, and their own
blunders have taught his successors that the revolutionary
process in the Third World is a much more complicated af-
fair than they first thought. Despite tactical shifts and
reverses, however, Soviet use of military instrumentalities
to gain advantage from this kaleidoscopic transformation of
political systems continues to increase.
48. The provision of military assistance in the form
of hardware, support, training, technicians, and advisers is
the most important dimension of this policy. Today the
Soviets have active military assistance relationships with
more than 30 countries of the Third World. The earliest
and heaviest concentration of Soviet assistance was and
remains on the USSR's southern periphery, in the Middle
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East and South Asia, but recent years have seen a dramatic
upswing of activity in Africa. Moreover, military assist-
ance to Peru (and, of course, Cuba) involves the Soviets in
Latin America. Heavy Soviet military investment in Southeast
Asia helped achieve a successful conclusion to the war in
Vietnam in 1975, but the once-substantial investment in
Indonesia evaporated after 1965.
49. The original motives of Soviet military assist-
ance were to encourage opposition to US and West European
policies and to seek political influence over the external
and internal affairs of the client country or movement.
These motives continue largely to shape Soviet arms trans-
fer policy, which over the years has compiled a long list
of attempts at political penetration through military aid,
with mixed results. In the last 10 years, however, Soviet
policy toward the Third World has also seen more strictly
military motives at work in efforts to acquire access to
operational and support bases for Soviet naval, combat air,
and air transport elements in distant areas. Moreover, the
emergence of arms-seeking Third World states possessing
large amounts of petrodollars has imparted an important
economic value to Soviet arms sales at a time when the USSR
faces a growing shortage of hard currency.
50. The Soviet record of influence buying through
military assistance has been mixed, at best, and currently
appears quite disappointing. The mid-1960s were marked by
a string of coups that turned the USSR out of some of its
most favored client states. The 1970s witnessed even more
embarrassing setbacks in countries where large investments
had been made: Sudan, Egypt, and Somalia. On the other
hand, Soviet military assistance during the same period has
helped to secure Soviet-favored outcomes in Third World
military conflicts in the Indian subcontinent, Indochina,
Angola, and Ethiopia; and it has permitted the USSR to
establish new footholds in Libya and Ethiopia, while main-
taining a political position in Syria, Iraq, and other
developing countries with which arms supply relationships
have been sustained. The Soviets seem clearly to have
concluded that the balance of costs and benefits of such
ventures warrants persisting in them. They may see no
alternative other than mere ideological posturing from a
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distance and forfeiture of a meaningful political role in
the Third World.
51. The expansion of Soviet naval capabilities and
presence in distant areas paralleled the intrusion of Soviet
military assistance into the Third World, but it stemmed
initially from a mixture of motives. What first drew the
Soviet Navy out into the world oceans from its traditional
roles was a set of new strategic circumstances: potential
threats from carrier-launched airstrikes and submarine-
launched ballistic missiles and the possibility of creating
a credible, eventually potent, SLBM attack force. These
continue to dominate Soviet naval requirements, but, as a
purposeful adjunct, Soviet naval operations now routinely
establish Soviet presence in regions of interest. Beyond
showing the flag, the most important mission of the Soviet
Navy, in contexts other than general war, is to provide a
spoiling or interposition capability that can help deter the
United States from direct use of its superior naval strength
in regional conflicts. This Soviet capability is most
strongly developed in the eastern Mediterranean and is grow-
ing as well in the Indian Ocean and along the west coast of
Africa.
52. The USSR has not engaged in direct and openly
avowed combat operations on a substantial scale in the Third
World, although its support in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle
East, and in several other minor conflicts involved a sub
rosa combat role for some Soviet military personnel, par-
ticularly in air defense units. Given time, permissive
entry, and suitable conditions for support, resupply, and
reinforcement, the Soviets could put major conventional
combat forces into any area of the world. However, their
typical predicament has been lack of these essentials, es-
pecially in the Middle East, where their capabilities are
otherwise greatest. Opinions differ as to how seriously
the Soviets meant their threat to introduce combat elements
into the 1973 Middle East war. Soviet leaders probably
expect that there may be times when their ability to pro-
tect local equities will depend on their having credible
intervention capabilities. They have for some time ex-
panded their airlift capabilities to supplement sea trans-
port capacity, and may be spurred in the future to increase
their investment in forces and logistic capabilities
tailored for distant intervention.
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53. The Soviets will be alert for opportunities to
establish a presence and to turn local developments into
trends of wider impact favorable to their interests. The
Soviets' reading of US post-Vietnam policy in the Third
World, of their own accomplishment in Angola using Cubans
as surrogates, and of the gradually expanding geographic
horizons of their involvement in developing countries
harmonizes with what their ideology predisposes them to
believe about political trends in these regions. At the
same time, they also appreciate that US policy is not a
constant, that political conditions in the Third World
are highly volatile, and that new factors, such as oil
producers' wealth and the infusion of more advanced weapons,
are entering the scene. For all these reasons, the So-
viets probably judge it wise to adhere to the policies
of the recent past in using their military assets in the
Third World--a cautious but determined opportunism, em-
ploying surrogates where feasible and displaying a willing-
ness to accept frustrations and reverses in the short run
with a view to achieving a positive and more durable politi-
cal balance in the longer term.
III.' THE THRUST OF CURRENT SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY
54. The foreign policy of the USSR since the
inception of the Soviet state has displayed a mixture of
conservative tendencies in defense of past gains and a
fundamentally assertive stance toward what has lain beyond
its control. The balance of elements in that mixture has
varied over time, but even when the weight of defense has
dominated, Soviet leaders themselves have seen their policy
as essentially revolutionary, resting on the expectation of
basic structural changes in the international system and
within the states that constitute it, and deliberately
seeking--for the most part cautiously--to help bring these
about.
55. Being more interactive with uncontrolled exter-
nal forces and actors, Soviet foreign policy displays a
kind of flux and pragmatism that is less visible in most
areas of internal affairs, including military force de-
velopment policy. Russian history, Soviet ideology, and
their own experience in international affairs impart to
Soviet leaders a mentality that permits near-term temperance
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and agile opportunism to coexist with a deep sense of manifest
destiny for Soviet power in the world. While they know they
must make numerous accommodations with the world beyond their
control, they are profoundly reluctant to accept these as
more than temporary.
56. This mentality sustains Soviet policy in steady
pursuit of systemic shifts in the world order through small
steps, and guards its fundamental beliefs against demoralization
and massive reappraisals in the face of reversals. The Soviets
see the sweep of postwar international affairs as broadly
confirming their convictions about the march of history.
Because their beliefs about the course of world politics
have deep cultural roots, and stem from an ideology that con-
fers domestic political legitimacy, even profoundly novel
developments, such as the appearance of nuclear weapons,
and deeply disconcerting events, such as the defection of
China, have not undermined their governing orthodoxy.
57. The current Brezhnev leadership, judging the
Soviet position to have improved substantially since it
assumed power in 1964, appears to see its gains as made
possible largely by the military programs it pursued:
the improvement in the Soviet stragegic posture vis-a-vis
the US, the deployment of augmented forces and weapons in
Europe and the Far East, and the development of instruments
for power projection to distant areas. The present leaders
ascribe the progress of their policy of detente with the
United States and their increased influence in Western
Europe since the late 1960s in good measure to the growth
of Soviet military power, which has also given impetus to
Soviet efforts to assert a military and political presence
in the Third World.
58. Partially offsetting Soviet foreign policy
gains are persistent unfavorable long-term trends inherited
from the Khrushchev era. These include the steady hostility
of a China that is gradually growing more powerful, an
increase in the costs of maintaining Soviet hegemony in
Eastern Europe, erosion of Soviet control within the world
Communist movement, and a continuing tendency toward re-
duction in the rate of growth of the economic base on which
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their military power rests. The Soviet leadership has sought
to halt or reverse these trends and is still engaged in these
efforts, with mixed results.
59. The main elements of Brezhnev's foreign policy
have all been in place since at least the late 1960s and
some trace back to the Khrushchev period:
-- Detente diplomacy toward the United States.
-- Detente diplomacy toward Western Europe.
-- Defense of the East European status quo.
-- Containment of China.
-- Movement into the Third World.
A. Detente Diplomacy Toward the United States
60. In the United States, the policy of detente
has been called managing the emergence of Soviet power on
the global scene. The Soviets have come close to character-
izing their own policy of detente as a way of managing at
once the emergence of Soviet global power and the relative
decline of US power. "Managing" in this case means to the
Soviets both encouraging and helping along favorable trends,
but also preventing or controlling dangerous discontinuities.
The evident conviction of Soviet leaders that long-term
processes in East-West power relations favor the USSR
coexists with their concern about the capacity of the
United States, when aroused, to resist those changes and
the possibility that such resistance could take forms that
might produce dangerous confrontations. Their respect for
American political and military power, as well as their
consciousness of the changeability of world affairs, persuades
them to weigh carefully their desire to press for new ad-
vantages against their concern for control and predicta-
bility in relations with the United States. In addition,
their strong interest in advantageous economic relations
and technological access to the West encourages them to
promote in the West generally expectations of stable rela-
tions with the Soviet Union.
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61. The strategic meaning of US-Soviet detente
for Soviet leaders is the management of change in world
politics in ways that control costs and risks while con-
straining as little as possible Soviet efforts to exploit
fresh opportunities for gain. Such processes as SALT and
US-Soviet cooperation in regional security negotiations allow
the superpower competition to be monitored and modulated.
On occasion, detente-engendered participation by the Soviet
Union in new international forums or in the management of
issues from which it was formerly excluded offers Soviet
leaders opportunities for exerting by diplomatic means
influence that otherwise might not be available or might
require more costly or risky measures to pursue. These
processes also oblige Soviet leaders to calibrate their
own competitive behavior against the risks of disrupting
detente, particularly in areas where the core interests of
the US are perceived to be deeply engaged. This calibra-
tion has not, however, reduced the willingess of the Soviet
Union to pursue competitive advantages vigorously in areas
such as Africa, where Moscow may perceive US interests to
be less deeply engaged or US policy to be hamstrung by
domestic political constraints.
62. On balance, Soviet leaders appear to regard
the arms control element of detente diplomacy as a material
aid to their military policy. Such efforts as SALT, the
talks on mutual and balanced force reductions (MBFR), the
nuclear test ban negotiations, and the dialogue on deploy-
ments in the Indian Ocean are seen in varying degrees by
the Soviets as means of influencing and perhaps limiting
the military response of the United States to the growth
and emergence of Soviet military power. In the Soviet view,
the very existence of these negotiations helps to create a
predisposition in the United States to see growing Soviet
power as legitimate and natural, whereas even a decade ago
Soviet claims to an expanded global role were seen as
illegitimate and unacceptable. While the USSR is prepared
to consider some modification of its own military policy
preferences to sustain the arms-control dialogue, Soviet
leaders have shown themselves to be strongly resistant to
arms-control agreements that would oblige them to alter
their basic military doctrine and force development and
deployment plans. When compelled in SALT to make a choice,
Soviet leaders display a perceptibly greater readiness to
modify or even withdraw their own demands for explicit re-
strictions on US strategic programs than to accommodate US
proposals for constraints on highly valued Soviet programs.
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63. Because both sides see strategic and other
military issues as central to the US-Soviet relationship
as a whole, the Soviets value arms-control dialogues, and
especially SALT, as a kind of cement in the whole detente
enterprise. Whether linkages to other issues are explicitly
stated or not, the fortunes of the larger policy are
strongly affected by the progress of SALT as a process,
which, in the Soviet view, requires periodic punctuation by
formal agreements.
64. Of late a key objective of Soviet leaders has
been to get back on track with a detente policy which they
have seen partially derailed by an accumulation of diffi-
culties that began immediately after its first great success,
the Summit of 1972. A countertrend in the United States--as
seen in controversy over the first SALT agreements, assess-
ments of Soviet behavior in the 1973 Middle East war, the
snarling of economic relations with the grain deals and
Jewish emigration, reactions to events in Angola, and
election debates--induced new skepticism in American opinion
and rendered the tone of the bilateral relationship increas-
ingly abrasive. The Soviets hoped for and expected that
this trend would be reversed after the 1976 elections. They
were thrown off balance by the novel--and, in their view,
possibly hostile--assertiveness of the new Carter administra-
tion, especially with regard to SALT and human rights.
65. The prominence of the human rights theme in
the administration's early approaches to the USSR perplexed
and, of course, offended the Soviet leadership. It probably
added to the arguments for a tough initial response to the
new administration. Soviet leaders were largely insensi-
tive to the internal moral and political wellsprings of
this behavior by the United States, seeing it as a well-
aimed propaganda arrow. They were unsure what the United
States expected to achieve from this immediately, but they
tended to react with characteristic concern to maintain
stability in Eastern Europe and to eliminate incipient threats
to domestic tranquillity. More crucial, they suspected that
the human rights gambit might be the initial salvo in a
much more combative and sustained US policy toward the
USSR. Soviet concern over the new administration's
approach to human rights and to SALT evidently led to a
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fairly comprehensive stocktaking during the spring and
summer of 1977. By midsummer, the Soviets could discern at
least temporarily reassuring signs emerging from Washing-
ton not only in official statements, but in other evidence.
To sustain what, in Soviet eyes, was this American "return
to realism," Moscow had to become more responsive, too.
Foreign Minister Gromyko's discussions with President Carter
and Secretary Vance in the fall, which culminated in a new
negotiating framework for SALT, probably persuaded the
Soviet leaders that their detente policy was on track again.
66. Since then, however, the Soviets have probably
perceived a growing accumulation of disturbing symptoms of
stagnation or even deterioration in Soviet-American relations.
While the range of unresolved questions in SALT was gradually
narrowed after the fall breakthrough in Washington, the
Soviets have probably perceived the US position on remaining
issues as becoming progressively more intractable. Moscow
has made clear its dissatisfaction with what it perceives to
be US tendencies to protract the negotiations and to exert
leverage by invoking the specter of Senate refusal to ratify
without fresh Soviet concessions. More recently, they have
seen the prospects for an early SALT agreement further clouded
by increasingly vocal adverse US reactions to Soviet behavior
on the Horn of Africa and by a growing tendency of the US
administration to associate the fate of SALT negotiations
with the outcome in Africa.
67. The Soviet leaders therefore probably have the
sense of approaching a watershed, since they continue to
regard the outcome of the present SALT negotiations as the
key to the prospects of their detente diplomacy toward the
United States in the next few years. They are keen for an
agreement on political grounds because they believe that
failure to achieve one would strengthen those forces in the
United States they regard as most hostile to the USSR, fuel
more generally skeptical American attitudes toward detente,
and possibly encourage compensating moves by the admin-
istration. At the same time, they probably appreciate that
no agreement acceptable to them will have easy sledding
through US internal politics. These perceptions argue for
flexibility, as well as toughness, on their part.
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68. Soviet views of the US cruise missile program
are critical to any assessment Moscow must make of SALT
options. The Soviets clearly wish to constrain this program
as much as possible. Their unenthusiastic public reaction
to cancellation of the B-1 program should not be read as
indicating the cruise missile was their only concern all
along. Privately they probably welcomed the B-1 decision
as averting a formidable new threat. Moreover, the B-1
decision changed the strategic landscape and presented the
Soviets with a more concentrated political target. Where
several years ago they had to plan on facing both a large
B-1 and a cruise missile threat, they now see a chance to
come out of the negotiations facing prospects of a US
cruise missile threat alone, at least for a time. But
their problem is not merely to achieve formal limitations
on that threat in SALT, but to cultivate a mixture of
formal limitations and political conditions that will
dampen the pace at which this technology advances and
proliferates. They may hope to benefit from friction
between the US and its NATO allies on the question of the
cruise missile's availability to the allies. In the long
run, they probably expect to face serious cruise missile
threats from the United States and others, but they hope
to slow and channel the process whereby this happens,
while they work on comparable and appropriate defensive
technologies.
69. Despite their concern with the cruise missile,
they evidently do not believe its effects on the strategic
balance would be as great as those they earlier anticipated
from extensive US ABM deployment. Rather, they see cruise
missiles as a new technology seeping out of the strategic
competition to make their whole damage-limiting strategy
more difficult, and they wish to slow this phenomemon at
minimum cost.
70. The Soviets' expectations for their longer
term relationship with the United States will be much in-
fluenced by their experience with current strategic arms
negotiations and by developments in the Middle East and
Africa. Their present judgment is probably that prospects
are somewhat better than they feared last spring but
poorer than they hoped in the fall. They probably expect
that Washington's activism will combine with more hostile
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public American attitudes to produce less predictable and,
intermittently, more competitive US behavior than they
earlier anticipated. They are probably less concerned that
Washington. may succeed in downgrading the importance of the
USSR in American foreign policy in ways that could diminish
their international status and are reasonably confident in
any case that the sheer weight of the Soviet Union in world
affairs will prevent this from happening. The Soviet leaders
probably appreciate that their prospects for managing politi-
cal relations with the US on a desirable basis will depend
on tactical subtlety and on positions they choose or are
forced to take on developments external to the direct bi-
lateral relationship.
B. Detente Diplomacy Toward Western Europe
71. Soviet detente policy toward the United States
in the early 1970s followed upon Soviet efforts of the
mid-1960s to respond to changed political conditions in
Europe. France and, somewhat later and more cautiously,
West Germany were looking toward the East in a manner
that presented the USSR with both diplomatic opportunities
and palpable threats to its East European hegemony.
Moscow's task was to convince European capitals as well as
Washington that Eastern Europe was untouchable, that
Moscow was the sole partner of consequence in any political
dialogue over new European security arrangements, and that
more West European independence from the United States was
a promising course.
72. The results of Soviet policy in the succeeding
10 years were mixed. Moscow clearly succeeded in driving
home the point that there would be no revising of the
political map of Europe by stealth or negotiation. The
USSR proceeded to cultivate reasonably amicable relations
with the major European countries for both political and
economic ends. On the other hand, a combination of un-
welcome events--from the invasion of Czechoslovakia to the
souring of the Helsinki gains--tended to block what Moscow
had earlier seen as improved chances for a more pronounced
West European shift away from reliance on the United States.
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At bottom what altered the more expansive mood of the mid-
1960s was a renewed appreciation on the part of West European
elites, including those of the left, that the USSR is a
nation whose behavior, values, and power are not congenial to
their way of life. Problem areas can be tranquilized, as in
the Berlin agreements of 1971, but Moscow probably sees no
major diplomatic revolutions in the making with the kinds of
governments currently in office.
73. The longer term objectives of Soviet policy in
Europe remain what they have long been, to assure the USSR's
hegemony in the East while gradually levering the United
States out of the West in a manner that precludes the
emergence of a politically and militarily united Western
Europe. In present circumstances, they see the most active
source of dynamism on the West European scene to reside in
internal political and economic developments.
74. The implications of Eurocommunism are crucial,
and here they see both good and bad news, and much ambiguity.
Leftwing electoral prospects imply movement in what would
once have seemed wholly welcome directions for the Soviets.
Yet the Communist parties so eager to play a role in this
are, from Moscow's point of view, deserting certain Leninist
orthodoxies as well as some pro-Soviet political positions,
creating danger for the ideological integrity of the USSR's
own dominions and new uncertainties for European politics.
This produces notable ambivalence in Soviet behavior. In
doctrinal matters, the Soviets want to make their orthodoxy
evident without anathemizing wayward parties. With respect
to the recent elections in France, they indicated some
distaste for the prospect of a victory of the leftwing
alliance on the terms likely to prevail between its mem-
bers, and appear to be satisfied with the outcome.
7.5. Soviet policy aims at cultivating and promoting
among West European governments and publics an inclination
to pay greater deference to Soviet interests both in all-
European affairs and in the framing of national security
policies. The behavior of Soviet leaders in working
toward this end often appears to be calibrated according
to the size and location of the state in question and to
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Soviet perceptions of the political vulnerability of its
government. In its various separate dealings with NATO
members, the USSR has displayed a tendency to be relatively
more blunt and forceful in pressing Soviet desires with the
small Scandinavian states of the Northern Tier, which are
both closer to Soviet borders than most other West Europeans
and more vulnerable to the force of the Finnish example.
In the Southern Tier, on the other hand, while the Soviets
evidently have considerable hopes that the coherence of
NATO will over the long run be weakened by the disruptive
forces at work, their behavior remains somewhat constrained
by a variety of complicating factors, including their desire
to woo both Greeks and Turks. Even in Italy, where the
Soviets clearly hope that the slow insinuation of the Italian
Communist Party (PCI) into the government will gradually
attenuate Italian ties to NATO, this is partially offset by
Soviet concern over the price they pay in the PCI's growing
incentives to take a more independent line toward Moscow.
76. In their dealings with the strongest European
states--Britain, France, and West Germany--near-term Soviet
expectations are probably modest. Although the Soviets
continue to see the nationalist element in French policy as
helpful to their interests over the long term, in recent
years they have seen disturbing negative trends in French
behavior, particularly the warmer French posture toward
NATO. Similarly, in the case of the Federal Republic,
Soviet leaders are especially concerned over what they see
as a trend toward increasing West German weight in NATO, a
trend which they fear may lead to eventual German acquisi-
tion of cruise missiles and possibly other advanced weapons.
Finally, the Soviets interact with the three largest
European powers and the United States in Berlin, which
Moscow continues to regard as a point of Western vulnera-
bility where pressure may be applied at any time, if cir-
cumstances warrant.
C. Defense of the Status Quo in Eastern Europe
77. The prospects for Soviet policy in Western
Europe are interwoven with the economic and political
fortunes of its Warsaw Pact allies, and are affected by
how the USSR manages the persistent task of preserving its
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hegemony in Eastern Europe. Soviet leaders regard this
task as a quasi-domestic problem, a characteristic which
distinguishes Soviet policy toward Eastern Europe from
all other elements of Soviet foreign policy. Major
economic and ideological developments in the states of
this region have important implications for the USSR, and
political setbacks in Eastern Europe strongly affect Soviet
politics, even leading (as in 1956) to a serious weakening
of the Soviet leadership's cohesion. In the present cir-
cumstances, the Soviets can see developments inimical to
social and political stability in Eastern Europe emerging
from several directions. The workers riots of June 1976
in Poland were especially unsettling to Moscow, and eco-
nomic difficulties in other Warsaw Pact countries have also
been a source of concern. In recent years, the Soviets have
seen the economic burdens associated with maintaining their
position in Eastern Europe grow, as Communist economies in
the area consumed subsidized Soviet energy resources that
could otherwise be exchanged for scarce hard currency.
78. It is generally understood-that the Soviet
leadership would use whatever means it deemed necessary,
including force, to maintain control. If economic or
political discontent once again generated a deep crisis
in Eastern Europe and forcible Soviet measures were taken
to end it, this would inevitably damage Soviet interests
in other regions and probably, as in 1956 and 1968, impede
preferred Soviet policies toward the West at least for
a time. For the present Soviet leaders and for any likely
successors, however, what would be in question in con-
fronting a serious challenge to their grip on Eastern
Europe would not be the ultimate outcome, but only the
costs of achieving it.
79. While the Soviets regard the United States as
their major competitor in the world and Europe as the most
important arena of the competition, they now regard China as
their most intractable opponent. For years, despite sober
calculations to the contrary, the Soviets entertained hopes
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that after Mao's death some sort of rapprochement with
China could be achieved. At the same time they have also
feared that detente between Peking and Washington might move
rapidly to heightened security cooperation and significant
infusions of US technology directly helpful to China's
military efforts. Neither the hopes nor the fears have
materialized, although Soviet anxieties about the possibility
of Western military-related assistance to China are still
strong.
80. The Soviets appreciate that the national roots
of Chinese hostility to the USSR are deep, making the pros-
pects for greatly improved relations remote indeed. They
also realize, however, that constraints on China imposed by
its internal politics, particularly during the Mao succession,
its economic and military backwardness, and the tenacious
difficulties between China and the US help to keep China
weak and comparatively isolated. Thus, while the Soviet
Union's China problem remains difficult and continues to
harbor the potential for developing into a threat of great
magnitude, the Soviet leaders find it manageable for the time
being. Moreover, with Mao's passing, they probably believe
the likelihood of a new severe crisis provoked by irrational,
blindly hateful Chinese behavior has receded.
81. Unable to move Chinese policy directly through
successive resorts to ideological dialogue, punitive economic
measures, thinly veiled nuclear threats, and assorted blandish-
ments, Soviet policy settled some time ago on attempting to
contain China's power and influence in Asia and in the Third
World and to impede its access to the economic, technical,
and military resources of the advanced capitalist countries.
82. In Japan, intrinsic difficulties in Soviet-
Japanese relations, ranging from the intractable matter
of the Northern Territories to abiding Japanese suspicion
of.Soviet motives, appear to impose severe limits on
Soviet flexibility. The Soviets realize that some give on
the Northern Territories might improve the chance for better
relations with Japan, especially in a period of Japanese
nervousness about the US role in the western Pacific.
But the precedent-setting implications of any territorial
concessions, especially in that region, seem to be judged
by the Soviets as more dangerous for their future relations
with China and Eastern Europe than attractive for the
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promise of better relations with Japan. Moscow probably
does not have high expectations of developing strong
positive ties with Japan in the near future, or of greatly
weakening Japan's ties with the US, but will be satisfied
to see Japan remain weakly armed and deterred from abandoning
its policy of rough equidistance toward China and the USSR.
83. The Soviets are highly alert to any signs that
Peking may be interested in improving Sino-Soviet relations,
however narrow the range or cynical the motive. In recent
years, as they anticipated Mao's impending death, they
probably considered various packages they might offer the
Chinese, including economic assistance and new approaches to
border management. They hope they are now dealing with a
Chinese regime that is at least capable of recognizing that
its own self-interest may be served by the appearance of
even a small improvement in Sino-Soviet relations. But a
Soviet initiative that confronts the central impasse in the
relationship has to hold out the prospect of concessions
on the regional arms balance and on territorial issues,
and perhaps even on a range of political-ideological matters.
Moscow is extremely reluctant to make such concessions,
particularly without very high confidence that Peking would
fully reciprocate them. More tactical flexibility could be
expected from Moscow, however, in the event of a promising
turn in Chinese internal affairs.
84. In Lenin's image of the world transformed, con-
flagration in the hinterlands of imperialism leads to
crisis and revolution in the metropolis of capitalism. This
vision persists in Soviet ideological efforts to give com-
prehensive meaning to the development of the Third World,
and it contributes to the determination of Soviet leaders
to expand the USSR's power and influence there. The diverse
regions and countries of the Third World present common
challenges to Soviet policy at a very basic level: socio-
economic development, political instability, regional con-
flicts, and nationalism. The revolutionary potential of
these common elements makes the Third World an arena of
interest and necessary involvement for the USSR, but also
makes that arena extremely unpredictable and difficult to
deal with.
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85. Although the desire to regain ideological
legitimacy and attractive force imparts a stimulus to Soviet
foreign policy in the Third World, that policy is shaped
increasingly by the specific and highly varied conditions
of regions and countries. The Middle East is clearly the
part of the Third World of greatest concern to the Soviet
Union. Soviet determination to play a major role in this
region, and the fact that Israel's fate, as well as access
to oil, anchor US interests firmly in the area, continue to
make it a potential arena for US-Soviet confrontation on the
Soviet doorstep. It is also the region where the Soviets
have since the early 1970s endured a succession of severe
setbacks, most notably their humiliating expulsion from
Egypt. The Soviets' gains in Libya and Yemen (Aden) and in
patronage over the Palestine Liberation Organization are
poor compensation for their losses.
86. Over the last few years, Soviet influence and
freedom of action in the Middle East have been constricted
by three converging developments. The first and most
important of these has been the enormous rise in influence
of the conservative oil-producing states, led by Saudi
Arabia and Iran, working against Soviet interests. Second,
the value of a military-political connection to the Soviet
Union has been eroded by Soviet inability to secure the
.satisfaction of Arab aspirations in the conflict with
Israel. Third, the Soviet position has been further
weakened by the growing orientation of the economies
even of radical Arab countries toward the capitalist
industrial states.
87. In the ongoing effort to combat these trends,
Moscow seeks to preserve its ties with the radical elements
of the region as the strongest available evidence that the
USSR retains a disruptive potential sufficiently great to
prevent its exclusion from attempts to reach a Middle East
settlement. The importance of the USSR's ties to these
elements has been increased by the dramatic opening of direct
negotiations between the two principal actors in the Arab-
Israeli conflict, Egypt and Israel, both of which wish to
minimize the role of the Soviet Union.
86. Apart from the Middle East, India has long been
the most important object of Soviet attention in the Third
World, both to help contain China and as a cornerstone of
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Soviet influence with the nonaligned movement. The fall of
Indira Gandhi was perceived by Moscow as a major setback.
While the new government's dependence on the USSR for
economic and military aid remains considerable, it is
clearly intent upon diversifying its foreign relations and
improving ties with the US. The Soviet leaders will attempt
to trade cautiously on India's dependence to limit the
damage of Gandhi's removal and to cultivate new bases for
the special relationship they hope to preserve.
89. The Soviets have seen Africa grow from a politi-
cal backwater to an arena of major interest in a few years.
They are not oblivious to the costs and risks of their di-
verse involvement on that continent. But their willingness
to exploit moderately tempting situations, despite these
risks, is clearer in Africa than in the rest of the Third
World. Most recently this willingness has been demonstrated
by Soviet conduct in the Horn of Africa. Having been ousted
from Somalia and their Berbera base because of the shift of
their support to Ethiopia in the Ogaden conflict, the Soviet
leaders moved quickly and decisively to help secure an Ethiopian
victory. Their determination to supply whatever was needed
to drive the Somalis out of the Ogaden--in materiel, Soviet
advisers, support for Cuban combat forces--was reinforced by
their resentment of US policy in the Middle East and by
their suspicion that the US also encouraged the Somalis to
oust them. The Soviets were aware that their setback in
Somalia was widely regarded as fitting into a pattern of other
recent injuries to Soviet prestige, particularly in the Mid-
dle East. Against this background, Soviet leaders evidently
perceived an increasing threat to the credibility of their
pretensions to status as a great-power actor with an expand-
ing presence on the world scene. These considerations, along
with a favorable diplomatic environment for supporting an
African state whose territorial integrity had been violated,
gave the Soviet leaders strong incentives to demonstrate
that the Soviet Union could make its will felt at a point
of Third World contention where the US was perceived as unable
or unwilling to act. Equally important, the Soviets were
tempted to deepen their Ethiopian commitment by the hope of
restoring their lost position on the coast of the Horn and
by the opportunity to entrench themselves in the largest
East African state. Having successfully helped Mengistu to
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expel the Somalis, the Soviets probably believe their achieve-
ment has impressively advertised Soviet-Cuban capabilities
to nationalist movements elsewhere in Africa, and has im-
proved Soviet chances of playing a larger role in determining
the outcome of the struggle for Rhodesia.
90. Other Third World areas currently receive a
lower Soviet priority. In Latin America, Moscow's diplomatic
posture since the fall of Chilean President Allende is funda-
mentally one of watching and waiting, while in Southeast Asia,
the overarching motivation of Soviet policy remains isolation
of China, with Vietnam as the USSR's most important anchor.
91. How the Soviets draw the balance sheet of their
positions in the Third World depends on the time frame and
the standard they use. While they are acutely aware of their
failures and troubles, these may be regarded by the Soviet
leadership as the inevitable casualties of more extensive and
progressively deepening engagement of Soviet interests in
the Third World and the gradual multiplication of the Soviet
presence abroad. The Soviet leaders are encouraged to per-
sist by what they see as basic trends, notably the with-
drawal of the United States from long-established positions
and flagging US public interest in contesting Soviet in-
fluence in the Third World (especially Africa and Asia).
They seem to perceive the American withdrawal from Vietnam
as a watershed, marking the end of an era in which US readi-
ness to intervene militarily dominated Soviet risk calcula-
tions in the Third World. They may read the US decision to
withdraw ground forces from South Korea as indicating the
persistence of that trend and, while they are aware of the
special external circumstances that constrained American
freedom of maneuver in the Horn, they are likely to regard
US inability to find means to prevent their successful large-
scale intervention in the Ethiopian conflict as further such
evidence. Finally, while the growing assertiveness of Third
World countries--as reflected in the radically revised terms
of trade imposed by members of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries and in the North-South dialogue--is hardly
harnessed to the USSR's purposes, Soviet leaders perceive that
assertiveness as causing the West more net harm than themselves.
92. The current Soviet leadership took charge of
Soviet foreign affairs when memories of Khruschev's Cuban
missile debacle were still fresh and while radioactive dust
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from China's first nuclear detonation was still settling.
Overall, Brezhnev and his associates probably count their
foreign policy a success in the sense that it has sub-
stantially advanced the Soviet role in the world; it has
secured for the USSR through a combination of diplomacy and
enormous military effort acknowledgement of coequal super-
power status with the US; and it has kept individual set-
backs from being generalized into rank disasters inter-
nationally and from disrupting stability in the leadership
at home.
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93.
In
assessing what Soviet power will amount to
and what
it
will be able to achieve in the future, Soviet
leaders
are
conscious of the pervasive dualism in their
foreign
and
military policies: a blend of pushing,
activating, and exploiting forces for change in favor of
Soviet interests, on the one hand; and preserving, de-
fending, steadying, and channeling activities to consoli-
date past gains and to avert unmanageable risks, on the
other. To a degree, the policies of any great power
display this dualism. The Soviets see the unique quality
of their own role in the world to be the revolutionary
purposefulness of both assertive and defensive actions,
and the harmony of those actions with the interests of the
Soviet state and the direction of historical change. That
this quality is manifest, not in visionary statesmanship,
but in the steady labors of various bureaucracies and in a
collective leadership of post-Bolshevik wardheeler politi-
cians makes it. the more'tenacious.
94. Although the Soviet leaders know that nuclear
weapons have altered the past rules and heightened the
risks of political-military interplay, their own experiences
persuade them that military power has not lost its relevance
to world affairs in the nuclear age. The military strength
of the USSR has an internal subjective function for the
Soviet leadership in giving it a sense of greater security
and confidence. It also has an external role in con-
ditioning the views of foreign decisionmakers as to what
is necessary and possible in dealing with the USSR.
95. The Soviets have observed a greater readiness
on the part of their opponents to take Soviet interests
into account in a growing range of political-military
issues around the globe. They know this is not because
the West now finds Soviet values more congenial and they
believe they have Soviet military power largely to thank
for the change. They are aware that the West hopes by a
variety of means, including economic inducements, to raise
the USSR's stake in a stable world order so as to deflect
it from potentially disruptive aggressive behavior. What-
ever else Soviet leaders may think of this Western con-
ception of detente, it conveys to them a Western appreci-
ation that the USSR's military power could be employed to
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promote a more venturesome Soviet foreign policy if
Soviet leaders were not persuaded on political and
economic grounds that present policies are more
promising.
96. For present Soviet leaders, military power is
crucial to both assertive and preservative action. In
times of crisis or tension, their military power allows
the Soviets to stand on forward positions and, like cash
in the bank, gives them added flexibility of action. The
Soviet leaders view their military power as conditioning
the political environment and allowing them greater freedom
of choice in mixing collaborative and more threatening modes
of action. It permits either mode to be pursued more
confidently: collaborative acts because they are unlikely
to be perceived by others as reflecting weakness, and
actions implying threat because Soviet capacity to back
them up is seen as more credible. This assessment of the
value of the USSR's military power shapes the leadership's
agenda of goals and expectations for the near and midterm
future.
97. The present Soviet leadership's future outlook is
probably also conditioned in substantial measure by the
advanced years of Brezhnev and other senior figures. Having
achieved much in advancing the role of the USSR in the
world, they seem committed to maintaining the relatively
steady course set in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that
of amassing military power, penetrating new areas of in-
fluence at moderate risk, avoiding high levels of tension
with the West, and containing the challenge of China.
98. Internal developments have a crucial, if not
always direct or obvious, bearing on Soviet foreign affairs.
Leadership politics affects policy choice. Dissent and
repression have become international issues for the USSR.
The Soviet economy continues to be the ultimate source of
Soviet physical power. Soviet leaders know that the USSR's
gains in the global power arena have been at least as much
the consequence of internal contradictions and domestic dis-
array in their opponents' camp as of successful external pro-
jection of Soviet strength and influence. They are conscious
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of the advantages conferred by the stability of the Soviet
political order for their conduct of sustained international
competition and they expect to retain those advantages.
99. The public outlook of the present Soviet leader-
ship on internal trends, while sober and restrained, does
not accord with the bleak prospects widely forecast abroad.
It is likely that Soviet leaders foresee mounting troubles
of varying degrees of intensity on several domestic fronts,
but they appear to believe that these can be managed or, if
necessary, endured at an acceptable cost.
100. With respect to the inevitable leadership transi-
tion that must follow the passing of Brezhnev and his senior
colleagues, the potential for instability is no doubt appre-
ciated. Little has been done to prepare for the transition,
however, presumably because Brezhnev continues to give
priority to consolidating his own position. Having weathered
the Stalin and Khrushchev successions, Soviet leaders may be
confident that the regime will be able to manage the next
succession as well. They are doubtless aware that previous
successions have sometimes led to major changes in the conduct
of foreign affairs, such as occurred following Stalin's death
and Khrushchev's removal from office. Yet they probably
expect the main directions of foreign policy to be maintained
for a time after Brezhnev's departure from office, since the
reduced cohesion of the post-Brezhnev leadership will make
it difficult, at least in the initial phase of succession,
to reach agreement on new policy directions.
101. Domestic political dissent makes Soviet leaders
jittery. But political dissent is perceived as only an
incipient danger, to be dealt with vigorously while it is
still small, employing the massive powers available to the
regime for this purpose. As long as detente lasts, the
Soviet leaders will be more inclined to use these powers
with circumspection, and will expect Western governments,
out of a similar concern for detente, to keep the issue
of Soviet political dissent at the margin rather than at
the center of their relations with the USSR.
102. On the economic front, by contrast, the Soviets
know they face very tough problems. They see the dismal
slide of returns on capital investment. They are aware of
the economic constraints, and also the ethnic, social, and
political problems that current demographic trends may
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generate. They know that feeding their economy with
adequate natural resources is increasingly taxing, and
there is growing evidence that they'~expect a worsening
pinch in oil supplies. Added to this is the perennial
threat of crop failures which can cause disruptions in
almost all sectors of the economy. The increasingly dim
outlook for the economy is apparent in the reduction of
the growth rate of industrial targets in the current five-
year economic plan and especially in recent annual plans.
In anticipation of possible future constraints on their
capability to earn hard currency, the Soviets have recently
begun to exercise more stringent controls on industrial
imports from the West in order to reduce their hard-currency
debt and enhance Western perceptions of their credit worthi-
ness.
103. It does not appear as yet, however, that the
Soviet leaders have synthesized these trends into a
prognosis of economic crisis so grave as to raise questions
about the need for a major change of direction in the basic
thrust of their foreign policy compelling them either to
draw back from detente and revert sullenly to autarchy,
or to attempt so radically to enlarge the scope and alter
the character of their relations with the West as to
facilitate a deep Soviet plunge into the international
capitalist economic arena. Both extremes would be un-
palatable, and the second almost certainly unacceptable
since it would be perceived by all to have been adopted
under grave economic duress. In the coming years, Soviet
leaders will probably continue to seek extensive economic
engagement with the West, pursuing new advantageous
arrangements that do not exact politically distasteful
concessions. They count heavily on capitalist avarice
and Western disunity to facilitate this course, but will
be prepared to pull back should growing economic ties
with Western countries build pressures on them to pay what
they regard as a politically unacceptable price.
104. The effect of potentially deleterious internal
social, economic, and political developments--were they to
become actual--on Soviet foreign policy are exceptionally
difficult for outside observers to gauge. For ideological
reasons as well as because of political risk, Soviet leaders
may also have trouble in recognizing the potential severity
of such problems before they are upon them. But as rulers
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of a nation that, in little more than two generations, has
come through civil war, collectivization, purges, a
colossally destructive war, and reconstruction to become
a second superpower, they will not easily be unnerved by
a crisis of factor productivity. A crisis of factor
availability, such as a decline in oil production might
precipitate, would be more difficult for Soviet leaders
to assimilate. If forced to choose, however, they are
likely to endure economic hardships and do with less,
rather than experiment with radically new institutions
and policies.
B. The Military Outlook
105. The most likely Soviet prognosis for the next
decade would not include revolutionary shifts in the overall
military balance or in the US-Soviet strategic nuclear
balance brought about by the weapons programs of the major
powers. Present Soviet leaders probably expect, however,
that the USSR will be able, by continuing on its present
military course, to retain its power position relative to
the US and NATO, and--more likely in the next few years,
less certainly thereafter--to improve upon it in some
significant ways.
106. The Soviets can now anticipate improvements in
the intercontinental strategic balance with the United
States in the early 1980s. Current Soviet modernization
programs, particularly the MIRVing of ICBMs and SLBMs will
have come to completion, by and large, while the US posture
will still be dominated by weapon systems of the 1960s and
earlier. This condition, along with other improvements in
the Soviet strategic posture, could persuade Soviet leaders
that their strategic war-fighting capabilities had been
materially, if only temporarily, enhanced. The present
Soviet leaders' deep aversion to nuclear war is most unlikely
to be mitigated because of such perceived advantages, but
they might expect their adversaries to perceive that this
condition had enhanced Soviet confidence and staying power
in crisis situations. If the Soviets do foresee a period
of perceptible strategic improvement between now and the
early 1980s, they can probably also foresee that circumstances
may arise in which they could extract political benefits
from it. It is highly unlikely that the current leaders
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would deliberately provoke a crisis simply to test the
effects of their strategic gains on NATO, but their
enhanced confidence may predispose them to act in ways
that could provoke unsought crises with the West. In
any event, the Soviet leaders would probably expect their
improved strategic position to influence the West's conduct
in any crisis that supervened during a period of perceived
Soviet advantage.
107. Short of crisis situations, the more generalized
political effects of improvements in the Soviet strategic
posture between now and in the early 1980s would be extremely
difficult for Soviet leaders to anticipate. The fact of such
improvements probably would not have to be broadcast by the
USSR since they are likely to be publicized in the US and
elsewhere in public debate. It is unlikely, however, that
Moscow could derive substantial political benefits from
changes in the strategic balance unless in its diplomacy
and propaganda it actively underscored their significance
as a new turning point in relations between the two camps.
To do so, however, would risk galvanizing the West to adopt
new military measures that would require the USSR, in turn,
to increase its own efforts or fall back in the arms
competition. Which horn of the dilemma Soviet leaders
might choose would depend on a number of circumstances:
on the Soviet interpretation of the defense debate in the
West and the Soviet estimate of how that debate would be
influenced by the USSR's efforts to capitalize on its
strategic gains; on the Soviet interpretation of the
political will of the US and its allies; and on the emer-
gence of disputes involving the two superpowers in which
the outcome, in the Soviet view, was likely to be influenced
appreciably by Western perceptions of a Soviet advantage in
the strategic balance.
108. Over the longer term, in the mid- to late 1980s,
Soviet leaders are probably much more uncertain about the
effects of military competition with the West at the margin.
On one hand, they may hope that successful SALT diplomacy on
their part and US internal constraints will markedly limit
the pace and scope of US strategic force improvements, perhaps
forestalling or delaying such systems as the M-X ICBM,
submarine- and ground-launched cruise missiles, hard-target
SLBMs, longer range air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs), and
follow-on ALCM carriers. Similarly, they may expect projected
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NATO force improvements to bog down in political and economic
problems, particularly those that might result from the
entrance of Communist Parties into the governments of Italy
or France. On the other hand, they cannot rule out the
possibility that most US strategic options and projected
NATO force improvements will come to fruition. But even in
this case, while the Soviets would be unsure of retaining
the more favorable balance in intercontinental forces they
can foresee for the early 1980s, they would not expect the
strategic balance to be turned against them. They rely on
their past investments, present military momentum, and
vigilance during the next decade virtually to rule out such
prospects.
109. Probably even more worrisome to Soviet leaders
than US strategic and NATO conventional force improvements
is the prospect that the "depolarization" of the familiar
strategic competition could be sharply accelerated by a
number of factors, such as dissemination of nuclear-capable
cruise missile technology to US allies and others, nuclear
proliferation, and more-rapid-than-expected Chinese military
modernization aided by the West.
C. The Foreign Policy Outlook
110. As they look to the decade ahead, Soviet leaders
see manifold uncertainties in the foreign affairs environment
with which they must deal. These offer promise as well as
risk and danger. But Soviet leaders probably believe that
the balance of military power has markedly reduced the likeli-
hood of major reversals in their core interest areas in
Europe and in the standoff with China. They would also
expect that their strength has reduced the probability of
crises they could not adequately handle in important, if
more marginal, areas such as the Middle East. There may
also be domestic crises in Eastern Europe, but the Soviets
remain confident that they can be dealt with without risk of
military intervention by the West.
111. The Soviets expect the United States to be an
assertive actor, willing to experiment and broadly engaged
in world affairs in contest with the USSR as well as in
matters where the USSR has little direct interest. They
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probably expect to witness fluctuations in US sensitivity
to the dangers over the long term of incremental Soviet
gains in the world. What they call zigzags in US policy
will have to be anticipated and endured to some extent as
the inevitable byproduct of a disorganized international
environment in which US power relative to that of the USSR
is seen to be in a general, if uneven, decline. The economic
health of the West is expected to be troubled, but the eco-
nomic collapse of the West is not in prospect. On the
contrary, the West's great productive capacity, its power-
ful role in world trade, and its overall technological
superiority over the USSR are perceived to pose a continuing
challenge to Soviet global aspirations. The United States
is expected to devote new energies to enhancing the cohesion
and strength of NATO and to improving NATO's military capa-
bilities, but the obstacles are judged by the Soviets to be
formidable.
112. Soviet leaders cannot be sure how long their
present policies for managing relations with the United
States will continue to prove workable. They are constantly
apprehensive about a US reversion to "cold war" behavior;
this could be induced by an international crisis or an
accumulation of perceptions in the United States that the
"correlation of forces" was shifting too dangerously. But,
failing such a turn, the current Soviet leaders would expect
to continue their present policies toward the United States
for some time with the aim of attenuating US reactions to
adverse trends, collaborating in managing problems where
US and Soviet interests partially overlap, and gaining
economic benefits. The Soviets probably see a similar
outlook for Europe, although the possibility of internal
political discontinuities, perhaps stemming from gains by
Eurocommunism or the destabilization of post-Tito
Yugoslavia, would appear greater.
113. The Soviets' forecasts of relations with China
are especially uncertain and reflect their difficulty in
understanding the wellsprings of Chinese political action.
Over the span of a decade the possibility of a substantial
improvement in Sino-Soviet relations is surely entertained
by the Soviets and is clearly the alternative strongly
desired. A far-reaching reconciliation is almost certainly
excluded and is difficult for the Soviets to imagine without
postulating a radical discontinuity in China. A more likely,
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still somewhat favorable, Soviet forecast assumes continued
strong antagonism, but with more fluidity in the relation-
ship as both sides seek to improve the shape of the triangu-
lar relationship with the United States,'which is now seen
as skewed in Washington's favor.
114. Unabated hostility from the present Chinese
leadership or its successors is probably still regarded by
Soviet leaders as more likely than not. How severe a threat
an unremittingly hostile China could pose to Soviet security
and foreign policy interests a decade from now is probably
seen by Soviet forecasters as depending mainly on factors
external to China. While the Soviets do anticipate that
China's economic and military power, especially under stable,
pragmatic rulers, will grow steadily in the years ahead and
are concerned about the costs that countervailing Soviet
efforts would impose, they are probably relatively confident
that China cannot by its own devices cause the Sino-Soviet
power relationship to shift seriously to Soviet disadvantage.
However, a deeply hostile China whose military capabilities
grew rapidly with the aid of large-scale economic, technical,
and particularly military assistance from the West would
confront the USSR with a two-front version of the worst
period of the Cold War. Soviet capacity to influence US
behavior provides an important measure of relief, but the
Soviets are aware that if they cannot alter China's stance
toward the Soviet Union they may have to accept constraints
on their own policy toward the United States so as to avoid
raising US incentives for higher levels of security coopera-
tion with China.
115. In the Middle East, the Soviets believe the
prospects for arresting or reversing the sharp downturn in
their fortunes would be improved by the failure of direct
Israeli-Egyptian negotiations and by the demise of Sadat
which they hope such a collapse would precipitate. They
are probably skeptical about the possibility of achieving
an enduring Arab-Israeli settlement and will try to obstruct
attainment of any agreement from which they are excluded.
A reversion of the region to its previous polarity would
provide the USSR with a more congenial policy environment
than the present one, although it would pose again the same
uncomfortable risk of a new war threatening Soviet confronta-
tion with the United States. To reduce this risk the USSR
would probably favor a Soviet-American jointly engineered
Middle East agreement in which the weight of the Soviet
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Union would be seen as resting unmistakably on the Arab
side. Almost any agreement the two sides could be per-
suaded to accept would be likely to lessen tensions and
reduce the risk of war for a time. Yet the Soviets probably
remain confident that no attainable agreement could so
thoroughly pacify the region as to make Soviet arms and
support irrelevant to its politics.
116. In the rest of the Third World, the Soviets
probably expect continued confusion and political volatility,
as in Africa at present and presumably elsewhere in the
future. They are likely to draw at least some encouragement
about their prospects elsewhere in Africa from their success-
ful intervention in Ethiopia. But although they would fore-
cast an overall decline in US influence in the Third World,
they would be uncertain of the pace of decline and would not
be confident that durable Soviet influence would necessarily
replace that of the US. They would expect more cases in
which their heavy political and material investments are
rewarded by perfidy and expulsion, but, overall, a strength-
ening of the Soviet position in the Third World and perhaps,
as a bonus, the acquisition of a few stable and relatively
hospitable partners on the model of Cuba.
117. Some Soviet leaders may be more prone to
systematic pessimism than this projection depicts. They
may see the possibility of a combination of external and
internal developments that would significantly worsen the
Soviet Union's international position in the coming decade.
The secular decline in the growth rate of the Soviet economy,
for example, together with severe energy shortages, could
provide grounds for forecasts of political instability in
Eastern Europe and of serious economic pressures for reduc-
tions in the growth rate of military spending, which over
time could constrict Soviet military options.
118. Coincident with political and economic diffi-
culties in their own sphere, a pessimistic forecast might
anticipate that a more assertive US Government, economic
health in the West, and increased general reluctance to
accommodate Soviet interests in East-West relations could
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lead to a groundswell of anti-Sovietism in Europe and parts
of the Third World. China could weigh in the balance to
produce a situation in which Soviet ability to do more than
defend core interests might be severely constrained.
119. Another view could incline toward systematic
optimism. Some prognosis might anticipate that continuation
of present military and political trends could present a
qualitatively more favorable situation in which the USSR
could in a nonviolent, incremental fashion cause regional
security arrangements to be redefined in its favor. For
example, it might expect some chance of channeling new
negotiations on European security toward arrangements in
which the Soviet role in the West is enhanced, the US role
reduced, and, given appropriate internal developments in
Western Europe, a degree of "Finlandization" becomes
possible. Clearly the role of Soviet military power in this
image of the future would be to persuade the United States
and especially its allies that new accommodations to Soviet
interests had to be accepted, despite their obvious portent
for the ultimate security and independence of the USSR's
neighbors.
120. That some Soviet leaders indulge in something
like the pessimistic view seems plausible in light of the
habitual Soviet fearfulness of reverses, some elements of
Soviet rhetoric about forces in the West favoring "cold
war," and looming economic difficulties for the USSR. The
optimistic view seems somewhat too sanguine and therefore
uncharacteristic, but it bears some resemblance to
Khrushchev's outlook in the late 1950s, under much less
favorable conditions, and recalls Brezhnev's reported
prognosis on detente to East European Communist leaders in
the early 1970s.
121. The diverse themes raised in this depiction of
what we believe to be the probable Soviet forecast of global
power competition, and the plausible variants on it, are not
mechanically connected to any precise assessment of the pre-
vailing strategic and other military balances, or necessarily
to any specific Soviet strategy for exploiting military power
to political ends. The leadership probably includes all these
possibilities in its outlook, and must take short-term as
well as long-term action in a long-term competition.
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122. Conditioning both the main-line Soviet forecast
depicted here, and plausible variants of it, is the aware-
ness of Soviet leaders that major discontinuities may occur
that could so alter the international environment as to
oblige sharp changes in their external policies in the short
run. Although we have no reason to believe that Soviet
leaders are better able than others to predict specific
discontinuities and disruptions that would radically alter
their present prognosis, their world view and life experience
make them sensitive to the fact that such discontinuities are
more likely than not to occur. During their political careers,
they have frequently seen the international environment
altered by unexpected events.
123. Discontinuities in world politics both favorable
and adverse to Soviet interests can be envisaged, although
mixed features are present in each of them. Abrupt changes
that would be perceived as severely damaging or threatening
to Soviet interests would include: rapid progress in Sino-
American rapprochement leading to explicit security coopera-
tion; a violent, contagious crisis in Eastern Europe; and
new large-scale wars in the Middle East or Korea. In addi-
tion to their adverse direct effects, these events would be
seen as seriously endangering the stability of Soviet rela-
tions with the United States. Discontinuities that Soviet
leaders would.welcome include: a new Chinese leadership
that sought accommodation with the USSR; revolutionary
regime change in Saudi Arabia or Iran; and the replacement
of some existing governments in Western Europe and Japan by
new ones committed to weakening, if not abrogating, present
alliances.
124. Anticipation of possible discontinuities both
strengthens the tendency of Soviet leaders to hedge against
serious future reverses and encourages them to build options
for exploiting possible windfalls. They see the continuing
expansion of Soviet military power as serving both the
hedging and goal-oriented elements of their policy. More-
over, the momentum established by current Soviet programs
makes it likely that the scope and rate of military ex-
pansion exhibited in recent years will be sustained well
into the next decade, regardless of what discontinuities
in world politics may occur. With respect to US sensi-
tivity to Soviet arms programs, the Soviet leaders appear
to have concluded that it is not their programs alone that
directly stimulate US military efforts or Soviet restraint
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which limits them. Rather, they see US military programs
as driven or restrained by a great variety of political
perceptions and impulses within the US decisionmaking
process. Soviet leaders seek to influence them chiefly
through political means, diplomacy, and their public
rhetoric. These tools can be selected to fit the mood in
the United States. But long-leadtime Soviet arms programs
that have been set in train for other reasons can hardly
be turned on and off to influence that mood.
125. Depending in part on what the United States
does, probably more on what technology offers, Soviet mili-
tary priorities may shift marginally. Thus, strategic
defenses might receive higher emphasis in coming years;
or general purpose navy and projection forces might receive
additional attention as the vigor of continental land com-
bat force improvement tapers off somewhat. But overall,
despite the increased weight of economic constraints, the
rate of growth in defense spending is unlikely to decline
substantially in the next decade.
E. The Successor Leadership
126. The question arises as to how the Soviet leader-
ship, evolving from its present to a new constellation,
is likely to assess the role of Soviet military power and
behave in using it. Leadership transition is likely to
involve periods of policy drift and contention as aspirants
to Brezhnev's role and senior status on the Politburo com-
pete with one another. While fresh initiatives in foreign
policy may be attempted, new directions are unlikely, at
least until the successor leadership has been consolidated.
127. The post-Brezhnev Politburo, like the present one,
probably will be made up of men with long experience in the
territorial party apparatus. The crucial difference will be
a generational one. While several of the 14 current members
will still be in the Politburo five or 10 years hence, their
new colleagues will include men who were born after 1930,
and who have few mature recollections of the convulsions of
the 1930s and the hazards and suffering of World War II.
On the other hand, current members of the Politburo (with
but one exception) had been born by 1918. Their formative
years were a time when the Soviet Union saw itself as en-
circled and besieged. Reared in a continental tradition,
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they did not encounter the global dimensions of Soviet
foreign policy until late in life. Having witnessed the
gradual emergence of the USSR as a superpower, they see
it as the culmination of prolonged, arduous, and costly
efforts. This predisposes them to value highly what has
been accomplished, what they perceive to be their heritage
and their legacy. While they have displayed a steady
inclination to advance the USSR gradually onto the global
political arena and to exploit fresh opportunities that
have presented themselves, they seek above all to preserve
and consolidate their gains and tend toward caution in
calculating the risks of actions designed to enlarge their
patrimony.
128. By contrast, the USSR's superpower status may
appear to the heirs of the present leadership not so much
a culmination as a point of departure. Accordingly, they
may be less satisfied with conservation, or even with
irregular, opportunistic advances, and more impatient to
exert pervasive leverage on world affairs. Habituated to
a powerful Soviet Union and to being regarded as in-
creasingly powerful by foreign leaders, they may be bolder
in exploiting that power to achieve their ends, less pre-
occupied with the risks of venturesome actions--risks which
they may in any case calculate differently--and more
attracted by opportunities for the aggrandizement of Soviet
power. They may be less sensitive to the ease of slipping
into very grave danger than to the promise of clever
policies backed by strength. Before they discover the
limits on translating superpower strength into political
influence, they may go through a fairly protracted phase
of exploring and testing those limits.
129. Depending on circumstances, however, the effect
of the distinctive generational experience of these future
Politburo members on their thought and action could con-
ceivably be otherwise. Lacking the conditioning preoccu-
pation of their elders with potential external threats
against which they felt inadequately prepared, having
perhaps had their ideological mind set even more deeply
eroded by longstanding privilege and material prosperity,
they might find the Soviet security position satisfactory
and decide to give overriding priority to grappling with
the internal problems that Brezhnev allowed to accumulate
during his rule--including a decline in economic growth,
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wasteful economic management, worsening ethnodemographic
problems, and slackened discipline in the party and labor
force. During such a phase a successor leadership might
be inclined, particularly if the West seemed receptive,
to subordinate foreign policy to domestic ends in an
effort to acquire from abroad technology and other inputs
which could accelerate Soviet economic development.
130. A tendency in the post-Brezhnev leadership to
turn inward and pursue the USSR's global mission less
energetically would involve a more substantial break with
the present policies and thus seems less likely to prevail
than a tendency to employ the USSR's power more vigorously
in the world arena. Nevertheless a call for a less ambi-
tious foreign policy and a concentration on internal re-
form may find advocates in a new leadership's deliberations.
Whatever their inclinations, the future Politburo members,
since their experience in foreign affairs will be somewhat
limited, will be impressionable in the early post-Brezhnev
years. They may be strongly influenced by their initial
perceptions of the balance between the opportunities and
risks of bold action on the world scene, on the one hand,
and of the advantages and costs of more cooperative rela-
tionships with the West, on the other.
F. Conclusion
131. On balance, the USSR's international behavior
during the next decade is likely to remain vigorous and
assertive, with the collaborative element of Soviet policy
toward the United States
to serve competitive ends
The Soviets will continue
as an impressive backdrop
and
its
allies carefully shaped
as
seen
in Soviet calculations.
to
see
their military strength
to
the
conduct of foreign policy.
They are likely to eschew boasting and saber rattling.
But, they will wish to assure that the general magnitude
of Soviet strength is perceived and appreciated, rebutting
efforts to depreciate it that imply the USSR can be
pressured or ignored.
132. International crises or tests of strength are
likely to find the Soviets more stalwart in the defense of
their declared interests than they have been historically.
Whereas Khrushchev could in 1962 persuasively appeal to the
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precedent of Brest-Litovsk to counsel the wisdom of retreat
in the face of superior might, the Soviets now probably
believe they have bought their way out of the situation in
which that precedent applies. In general, they will see
others as having at least an equal obligation to compromise.
This inclination will, however, be highly dependent on
actual local power balances in regions of potential confron-
tation, and on the Soviets' estimate of the relative
centrality to the parties of interests that are in conflict.
They will not stubbornly press a marginal Soviet interest
against a central US concern in an area of relative Soviet
weakness; but they may display an increased tendency to
offset weakness in one area of contest by raising the
possibility of involving an area of Soviet strength. Were
a Cuban crisis to be replayed today, for example, the USSR
would be in a better position militarily than it was in
1962 to link its resolution to European issues.*
133. The Soviets will assert the right and display
willingness to fish in tempting troubled waters, on the
model of Angola and the Horn. The profile they assume
will be governed by the desire to avoid needlessly pro-
voking the United States or staking their reputation too
strongly on uncertain outcomes. They will be prepared
to see political and material investments in dubious
ventures written off, but will be on the lookout for the
chance to enforce the durability of such investment. Here
local political, military, and logistic variables will be
important, as will the strength, timing, and durability of
US resistance.
134. Soviet policy is likely to display an increased
tendency to press for creation of new, or revision of
existing, regional security arrangements along Soviet
preferred lines. This may or may not involve intrusion of
new Soviet military roles, but it will involve pressure to
reduce US political and military influence and to enhance
Soviet political influence. The Soviets are unlikely to
apply direct military pressure to advance their political
goals, unless a crisis situation supervened. But Soviet
diplomatic efforts are likely insistently to press the
* For a dissenting view on paragraph 132, from the Director,
Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State,
see the end of the Key Judgments.
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view that the time has come to make changes because local
conditions could precipitate a confrontation in which the
USSR has enhanced power to affect the outcome.
135. The foregoing themes are components of a fairly
natural evolution of the Soviet Union's foreign policy,
taking into account its emergence as a superpower. The
changes from past behavior that they imply are gradual and
continuous, and are rooted in the basic perceptions and
values that have long informed Soviet policy. To discourage
Soviet assertiveness on the international scene, internal
social and economic troubles would have to be profound,
enduring, and, of course, clearly perceived as such by the
Soviet leadership; such a recognition might well affect the
very character of the Soviet regime as strongly as its inter-
national behavior.
136. In calculating the temper of their foreign policy
assertiveness of the next decade, Soviet leaders will give
the closest attention to the power, determination, and
stability of the United States as a competitive actor, and
to the degree of cohesion US alliances display. Over that
span of time, these variables may not of themselves alter
the character of Soviet goals and expectations in world
affairs, but they will be crucial in determining the time
frame in which Soviet leaders consider them realistic, and,
hence, the basis for practical policy choices.
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