SURVIVAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81B00401R002100040012-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 15, 2004
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: October 1, 1977
• Content Type: BOOK

SEPTEMBER/ OCTOBER 1977
The International Institute for Strategic ,Studies
 as seen from London and Paris
The U"oviet Strategic Balance
HERBERT GOLDHAMER
Perceptions of the military forces and capabilities
of other nations do not necessarily correspond
with the actual status of these forces. As history
demonstrates, secrecy, deception and self-decep-
tion frequently combine to produce disparities-
between reality and belief. These disparities often
? have important political and military conse-
quences, affecting as they do opportunities for
deterrence and intimidation, the probability of
war and success or failure if war occurs. Napoleon
was especially sensitive to this: `In a war all is
mental, and opinion makes up more than half of
reality'. `The reputation of one's arms in war is
everything and equivalent to real forces'. Clearly,
then, political and military leaders have strong
incentives to shape the perceptions of potential
or actual antagonists, allies and third parties.
Nazi Germany's success in the pre-war period in
persuading many sectors of English and French
opinion that her strategic air capability would
enable her to, destroy the cities, populations and
industries of France and Britain is one important
case; one, however, that reveals that tendencies
to self-deception help make manipulation and
deception more feasible. The Soviet Union's
success not only in masking her strategic inferi-
ority to the United States in the mid-195os and
through much of the 196os but in convincing the
world, including many sectors of American
opinion, that she was strategically superior is
another instance of highly successful deception.
Of course beliefs may also be manipulated to
ensure that others' perceptions . accord with
reality when that reality is favourable to oneself,
and they can be used for purposes of deterrence
or intimidation.
The evident importance of how potential
antagonists, allies, neutrals and one's own people
view the balance of military power has recently
led to a series of studies of the US-Soviet
strategic balance as'perceived by various groups
Herbert Goldhamer was formerly a staff member of the
Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California. He died on
8 August 1977.
and opinion sources. This article summarizes the
results of two such studies: the images of the US-
Soviet strategic balance as presented in the
London weekly The Economist and the Paris daily
Le Monde from 1948-73.1
Study of these two journals was motivated by
several considerations. First, the United States
has an interest in the opinions and morale of her
European allies, and the effect on them of their
information and,judgments on the US-Soviet
strategic balance. Second, The Economist and Le
Monde are read by political, economic and
administrative elites, not only in their own
countries but throughout Europe and, indeed, the
world. Third, these journals are of interest not
only for their influence on others but as an
expression of opinion and information by a
relatively sophisticated set of journalists whose
perceptions of the balance have an interest inde-
pendent of their influence. Fourth, these journals
provide relatively stable sources that avoid
dependence on remembered past opinions; they
represent an adequate degree of consistency of
audience, style and substantive coverage over the
quarter-century studied.2 Finally, it seemed
reasonable to suppose that a careful reading of
their reporting and editorial writing on the US-
Soviet balance would provide some insights into
how perceptions of the strategic balance are
shaped. 3
' These studies were undertaken by The Rand Corpora-
tion, supported by the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency.
8 Both The Economist and Le Monde showed some changes
in political orientation during the period studied, but
these changes do not seem to have had a substantial effect
on their coverage and perceptions of the US-Soviet
strategic balance.
The Centre de Documentation of Le Monde in Paris,
whose cuttings of news and editorial content are classified
under helpful headings, made it possible to photostat
expeditiously the relevant portions of twenty-six years of
Le Monde. I am deeply indebted to the courtesies provided
by M. Michel Tatu and the personnel of the documenta-
tion centre. Examining twenty-six years of the weekly The
Economist was, of course, much less of a problem.
 As a weekly journal of opinion with unsigned
Wles and not much detailed attribution of
rces, The Economist tended to present at any
one time a relatively uniform picture of the US-
Soviet strategic balance. Le Moinle's treatment
was marked by an exceptionally broad range of
sources, official and unofficial, usually with very
full attributions. Consequently, Le Monde pro-
vided a set of images of the balance rather than a
single view at a given moment. Editorial coin-
ment (often appended to news articles) and
specialized articles provided a substantial amount
of guidance in the interpretation of conflicting
views and thus gave a Le Monde cast - not in any
case unvariable - to press agency materials on
US and Soviet military affairs. Le Monde, with
the greater space available to a daily and its
penchant for not writing down to its readers,
provided numerous technical articles on modern
weaponry that were indispensable for a proper
understanding of American and Soviet postures
and capabilities. How many readers studied these
articles is a matter of conjecture, but their con-
tinued publication over the quarter-century
covered suggests that the Le Monde editors
believed that they gave a real service to their
readers. These technical articles, together with
articles provided by Le Monde's correspondents
editorial writers, complemented press agency
s reports on what military and technical
rnals, military annuals (The Military Balance,
Jane's, etc.), foreign news magazines and news-
papers were saying.
What is the Strategic Balance?
From the investigator's standpoint the US-Soviet
strategic balance refers to capabilities for nuclear
inter-continental war: These include number and
.size of weapons, their carriers, accuracy, reliability
and other qualitative features, warning and
defence capabilities including civil defence,
command and control, and the probable dynamic
interaction of all these in the course of an actual
conflict. It is possible to find statements on most
of these matters in The Economist and especially
in Le Monde and these taken together may be
said to constitute their conceptions of the
strategic balance (and possibly of their readers).
But for any particular correspondent, news
agency writer or editorialist, the strategic, balance
was sometimes a much vaguer object. The
exigencies of exposition could tempt them (and
indeed the investigator) to ascribe a greater
exactness and sharpness of contour to a percep-
tion than it deserved. What is often required in
these matters is an exact description of confusion
or vagueness. Nonetheless, the following pages
probably represent fairly enough what The
Economist and Le Monde had to say on the
strategic balance..
Both The Economist and Le Monde gave con-
siderable prominence to quantitative characteri-
zations of the strategic balance: the number of
inter-continental missiles, warheads, bombers,
etc. This prominence was very much a conse-
quence of the considerable publicity given to The
Military Balance, Jane's and US official and un-
official statements on these matters, and later to
the Strategic Arms' Limitation (SALT) negotia-
tions. Numerical comparisons are the easiest to
express and probably to absorb. Le Monde, how-
ever, was conscientious in giving substantial
attention to qualitative differences in material
and to aspects of the balance not'. so readily
reducible to a few numbers. With the greater
space available to a daily, and lengthy articles as
well as brief news reports with their appended
editorial comment, Le Monde was able to provide
for its readers a much'fuller and more accurate
image of the balance than could a weekly journal
of opinion like The Economist.
In both The Economist and Le Monde a rather
different conception of the strategic balance
could occasionally be detected: at times an
assured destruction capability by each side signi-
fied an equivalence of strategic military power
irrespective of the `numbers game'. This view,
however, was not consistently held. The balance
was also sometimes conceived as including
elements such as national will, technical and
economic resources.
Who is Winning?
During the twenty-six-year period covered by
these two studies, both The Economist and Le
Monde overestimated . Soviet ' capabilities at
various times. In the case of both journals this
was least' noticeable in the field of nuclear
weapons and submarine-launched ballistic mis-
siles. (sLuM), was quite pronounced in the heavy-
bomber field (especially in Le Monde in the early
195os), and most apparent in both journals in the
inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) field
during the period 1957-61. There was only one
 important case where American capability was
grossly exaggerated (see below). Most of the
attributions of excessive capabilities to the Soviet
Union corresponded on the whole to beliefs
widely current in the United States and often
responsible for European misperceptions. At a
time when United States strategic superiority was
greatest, many sections of Western opinion
thought the Soviet Union was the stronger, and
it was precisely when the Soviet Union began to
overtake the United States in numbers of inter-
continental ballistic missiles that Western opinion
(as a result of the success of the space programme)
began to ascribe greater strategic strength to the
United States.
There were some differences between the two
journals worth noting:
(I) While both accorded an advantage to the
United States in bombs and warheads, in 1965
Le Monde began to point out a Soviet advantage
in megatonnage;
(2) In the heavy-bomber field Le Monde found
little to say in 1948 and 1949, and in 1952-3
attributed heavy-bomber capabilities to the
Soviet Union equal to those of the United.States.
The Economist, in the meantime, gave the United
States- a vast lead in this department during these
years;
(3) Le Monde was much more impressed by
US weapons technology and was not so prone to
be carried away by Soviet `super' bombs and
`global' bombs. On the other hand the journal
was over-impressed by the quality of Soviet
bombers in the early 1g6os and thought they had
a degree of excellence unequalled in the United
States;
(4) Although, initially very much impressed by
Soviet accomplishments in the missile and space
field, Le Monde became more cautious as its
conviction grew that the Soviet advantage was
largely sustained by the size of its launchers;
(5) Le Monde was sufficiently impressed by
US accomplishments in nuclear. submarines,
SLBM, and multiple independently targetable re-
entry vehicles (MIRY), to give the United States an
edge in the strategic balance, even after it had
reported that the Soviet Union had surpassed the
United States in numbers of ICBM.
It is likely that for many readers of Le Monde,
and, The Economist, and certainly for some of the
writers,, represented' in these journals, military
capabilities as discussed above were less interest-
ing or relevant than notions concerning what each
nation could do to the other. As we noted earlier,
views on who had, for example, more ICBM were
sometimes associated with the belief that neither
the Soviet Union nor the United States would
dare to engage in a first strike. Thus a belief
concerning deterrence (or non-deterrence) could
be associated with a very wide range of capabili-
ties imputed to the two super-powers.
The Process of Perception
More interesting, perhaps, than the views of The
Economist and Le Monde on who was ahead in
strategic capabilities - views, after all, not so very
distinctive - are some of the underlying charac-
teristics of the perception process.
.(I) The Economist had a marked tendency to
report any event concerning a new weapon
development as being immediately and of itself
affecting the current strategic balance although it
would generally not, be operational for several
years. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik
and her first ICBM test vehicles, The Economist
spoke of `a majestic Soviet superiority'. It was
not until 1962 that it got around to saying that
ICBM were, after all, rare on both sides and, in
effect, the strategic balance still depended largely
on manned bombers. Similarly, when President
Johnson announced in 1964 the development of
the US Air Force's A-II, this declaration was
referred to by The Economist as `altering sharply'
the balance of power between the United States
and the Soviet Union. Le Monde did not tend to
make such rash statements, although it seems
clear from other evidence that people generally,
and therefore probably its readers, often
assumed changes in the balance when new, not
yet operational, developments were reported.
(2) Rates of change in a strategic dimension
sometimes dominated accounts of the current
status so that the perception of a change in the
balance sometimes led to an assumption of
current superiority for ,the side with the greater
growth rate. 'Since the Soviet Union started off
behind the United States in the nuclear and
bomber field, emphasis on rates of change tended
.to make her look better than an emphasis on the
current status would have done.
(3) Capabilities and deficiencies in non-
strategic areas affect judgments of the strategic
 lance. Thus, in 1974 The Economist judged that
S inflation had negatively affected the American
position in the balance of.power. Much earlier, in
1948, Professor Blackett had been quoted to the
effect that Soviet ground superiority 'offset US
bomb superiority. In the same year The Economist
had quoted Secretary Marshall to the effect that
he US military establishment was `a hollow
hell'. These statements from both sides of the
Atlantic are not quite relevant to our definition
of the strategic balance as nuclear inter-continen-
tal warfare, but that hardly precluded others from
having'their perceptions of the balance altered by
them, despite The Economist's statement, also in
1948, that the United States had a `formidable
ead' in nuclear weapons. An imputation of
military capabilities from non-military achieve-
ments is made explicit in a statement by Le
Monde's Andre Fontaine, referring to Apollo 8:
`INow it is self-evident that the military machine
Qf a country capable of such an exploit has every
ikelihood of being at the same level' (29-30
December 1968, emphasis added).
As Fontaine's statement might lead one to
uspect, the space race was a very important case
of non-military development shaping perceptions
of the strategic balance. In the earliest years the
wo were not independent since the space race
ovided the principal input for discussions of
cart developments. However, even in -later years,
both The' Economist and Le Monde attached a
great deal of importance to events in space. The
Economist had predicted that the Soviet Union
would reach the moon a good many years before
the United States, and perhaps it was the heavy
burden of this prediction that led to their rather
petulant remarks in.later years, both about Soviet
failures and US Apollo successes:
(4). The more or less factual materials present-
ed by The Economist and Le Monde on strategic
weapon developments were complemented by
substantial amounts of other material that had a
propagandistic character (not always evident).
These materials were generally newsworthy and
not likely to be neglected by press agencies. They
seem to have had substantial effect on public
opinion throughout the world and on the press
agencies, correspondents and editorial writers of
TI he Economist and Le Monde and, of course, of
the media in general.
The propaganda battle was waged in three
forms: (t) by the development or exploitation of
weapons in a manner not entirely dictated by
technical requirements, that is,' dictated by
political objectives; (2) by demonstrations of
weapons to key persons (aiming to influence
military, media and public opinion); (3). by state-
ments, speeches, reports, etc., that stretch the
truth for political effect. (Of course on many
occasions the truth was also a powerful moulder
of perceptions of the balance.)
The first form .was a Soviet speciality. The
Soviet 6o-megaton bomb may have been partly.
dictated by Soviet technical backwardness in the
early years, but it is likely that it was partly
motivated by political considerations. Certainly
its exploitation was highly political. Soviet large-
megaton bombs and the Soviet orbital (global)
bombs were interpreted by Le Monde as having
little or no military significance and as politically
motivated. The Soviet choice of dates for some of
its space launches were politically and not techni-
cally determined.4 Of course, the entire Apollo
programme can equally be viewed as an immense
propaganda undertaking, but technical considera-
tions predominated in its execution. In any event,
both Soviet weapons propaganda and the
American Apollo programme had enormous
consequences for world perceptions of the US-
Soviet strategic balance. Sub-polar tours by
American nuclear submarines were also intended
to impress the world and probably had political
as well as technical motives. The ability of United
States war vessels to approach so closely to the
northern borders of the Soviet Union was viewed
by Le Monde as an American strategic triumph. In
the early years of the cold war US Air Force
transatlantic flights of F-8o, B-29 and B-36 air-
craft, though partly resulting from the lack of
permanent overseas bases, were no doubt
intended-in addition to training and testing
functions - to convince allies and the Soviet
Union of American capabilities.
Less important perhaps, but instructive never-
theless, was visual perception of weapon demon-
strations and air shows. An article by an Econo-
mist correspondent who witnessed a Nike-
Hercules ground-to-air missile `kill' a small drone
target clearly showed that visual demonstration
carried far more conviction than was likely to
come from a public-relations release or the state-
ment of a high official. The reaction of two report-
 representing a broad spectrum of political and
military views - often meant that conflicting state-
ments and highly tlegative remarks concerning
US military power reported by The Economist
and Le Monde came from United States spokes-
men. The Soviet Union did not engage in self-
derogation to say the least, though with one very
important exception. In.. 1956 Marshal Zhukov
told Hansen Baldwin of the New York Times that
the United States overestimated Soviet strategic
air strength. This statement, so out of character
for a Soviet spokesman, coincided with the visit
of General Twining, Chief of Staff of the Air
Force, to Moscow, and it seems likely, given the
unimpressive show. that the Soviet Union put
before Twining and his party, that their behaviour
was intended to get the United States to lower her
estimate of Soviet strategic air capabilities and
thereby to decrease the production of the B-52
(recently augmented due to the threat of Soviet
aviation growth). B-52 production was in fact cut
back after the Zhukov statement and the Twining
visit.
,4 In addition to a solid propaganda front claim-
ing great military achievements, during a set of
-crucial years the Soviet Union had the advantage
?of.a,spokesman who could make headlines -
arshalVlalin6Ysky was also,a,frequent spokes-
man who received substantial attention. Their
statements were replete with hyperbole. Soviet
bombs, rockets, submarines, etc., were almost
always `super' and `gigantic', and Le Monde
sometimes took over this language. When an out-
right denial of an American,claim was difficult to'
make, it 'could nonetheless in effect be achieved
by a Soviet answer that side-stepped the main
point, but not too obviously. Thus, an American
statement claiming US superiority in SLBM might
lead to an immediate Soviet `rebuttal' that, quite
to the contrary, it was the Soviet Union that had
far more submarines than the United States - a
statement which, if reported, headlined or read
carelessly, gave readers the impression that the
Soviet Union was saying that she had more
SLBM.
American official spokesmen were not always
of a rank to get the same amount of attention as
Khrushchev and. Malinovsky, although the
attention accorded President Eisenhower's fare-
well speech on leaving office and President
Johnson's announcement of the A-it should
have made the White House more aware of the
importance of the President as a spokesman.
When Deputy Secretary of Defense Gilpatric
made his important statement on 21 October
1961, concerning the nonexistence of a US missile
lag, neither Le Monde nor The Economist paid
very much attention to it. However, Secretary
McNamara's strong statements concerning' Unit-
ed States superiority (he was in a favourable
position to make-them) elicited defensive, almost.
frantic and hysterical, denials by the Soviet Union
that must have made a poor impression on per-
ceptive readers of Le Monde. On the other hand,
Secretary Laird (admittedly in a less favourable
position) was so fond of bewailing the US mili-
tary position that Le Monde rebuked him. One
should add that Soviet affirmations of great
military accomplishments did not always achieve
their intended effect. Le Monde frequently adopt-
ed a sceptical tone in reporting Soviet claims.
(5) Perceptions of the strategic balance were
also. substantially affected by the political and
military actions of the Soviet Union and, to a
lesser extent, of the United States. Anything
from rhetoric in the UN to the invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968 influenced views on the
strategic balance. Aggressive, seemingly confident
behaviour of a country's leaders tended to be
interpreted as a sign of military strength. Defen-
'1 Bb0401 R002100040012-5
ers from The Times (London), who visited the
first US nuclear submarine while it was under
construction,. also conveys the visit's emotional
impact . on them. Le Monde's reports on the
Strategic Air Command (SAC), based on corre-
spondents' visits, are charged with a sense of deep
respect and were far more effective than anything
else Le Monde published on United States mili-
tary organizations. As one Le Monde correspon-
dent wrote, `Nothing replaces a certain visual
experience . . .' (21-22 July- 1963). The Soviet
Union provided a somewhat less intimate form of
visual impact in her Paris and 'Moscow May
Day fly-pasts and air shows. These various efforts
to impress. media representatives as well as
military and diplomatic personnel paid off in
prominent stories in the media.
The third mode of shaping perceptions may be
appropriately termed the battle of statements by
political and military leaders of the two powers.
Here the Soviet Union had a substantial advan-
tage. The exigencies of the United States budge-
tary process and the multiple American voices -
 Approved For Release 2004/03/25 : CIA-RDP811B00401 R002100040012-5
pressiou `of military weakness.'1'he early
f the cold war and of the early missile and
races were periods when Soviet aggressive
behaviour and Western expressions verging on
panic, reported at length in both Le Monde'and
The Economist, influenced judgments on where
military strength lay. How easily a political
leader can influence the views of apparently
sophisticated political and media personalities
was illustrated in late September and early
October 1960, when Khrushchev's insulting
behaviour in the UN Assembly led to an
`urgent' meeting in Washington of Eisenhower,
Macmillan, Menzies and their advisers. The
language used by The Times in discussing this
meeting is revealing: `Altogether this brief but
intensive Washington interlude has reflected the
concern - indeed, the alarm, felt over Mr Khrush-
chev's mysterious behaviour ...' (3 October 1960,
emphasis added).
On the United States' side, it seems that
MacArthur's Inchon landing did as much to
fortify The Economist's confidence in American
strategic power as any information on US atomic
weapons and delivery capabilities. On the other
hand, Le Monde tended to treat American
responses in Korea, Cuba and Vietnam not so
much as evidence of US military power as of US
Sal will.
.Military Threat or Political Advantage
We have already seen that substantial distortions
of the strategic balance (including at times a
complete reversal of the actual situation) could
be found in The Economist and Le Monde, as well
as in the views current in the United States and
most parts of the world resulting from the pro-
cesses discussed above and, of course, from
secrecy maintained on military -matters, particu-
larly by the Soviet Union.
There are three points of further interest that
should be noted concerning the impact of these
perceptions.
(1) When the Soviet Union was judged to be
achieving great strategic power The Economist
viewed this development with alarm as signifying
a substantial increase in military threat. Le Monde,
on the other hand, tended to view such circum-
-sQA; a ww ,, ~si~tn a ly a u ode i9 4 WNW;
rather than military opportunities. This differ-
ence was probably associated with a tendency for
The Economist to identify the United Kingdom
with the United States as a single Anglo-Saxon
entity, subject to the same military threat; and for
Le Monde to take a more distanced view of US-
Soviet rivalry, as it had a less direct relation to
French national security.
(2) A similar difference appears in the treatment
of the space race by the journals, The Economist
being more prone to see. military significance and
Le Monde political and prestige consequences -
again especially in the Third World. Le Monde's
emphasis on political consequences in the Third.
World had a curious feature - evidence on this
matter was difficult to find in its columns, and in
reading these statements one is led to feel that Le
Monde preferred to ascribe to the Third World an
impressionability that was by no means.absent in
France, as French public opinion polls showed.
Certainly Latin Americans were greatly influenc-
ed by Sputnik, but during the later years of the
space race and Soviet ICBM numerical superiority
Latin American commentators often tended to
see their own military and technical capabilities
as so inferior to the two great super-powers that
any distinction between the ' latter was hardly
perceptible or worth mentioning. They were
simply both 'of the first rank'.5
(3) Finally, one should note thatthe many factors
affecting judgments of the strategic balance,
especially the succession of sensational political,
military, weapon-development and space events
during the 195os and 196os made opinions highly
changeable and induced a degree of instability fn
judgments of the balance that is one of the more
notable features of the period.
6 The ease with which perceptions of self are also in-
fluenced by images of the super-powers is well illustrated
in a statement by an important Latin American commen-
tator, Mariano C. Grondona. Impressed by the physical
size of the United States, Grondona finds that the Euro-
pean nations 'are small like our own' (emphasis added).
He thus seems to ignore that his native Argentina is larger
than West Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain,
Holland, Belgium, Norway and Sweden taken together,
and that even Bolivia is larger than West Germany, Italy,
Belgium and Holland combined. 'America Latina como
region', Vision, 25 September 1970, p. 63.