THE US-SOVIET CONFLICT: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP89G00720R000600700001-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 25, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 12, 1986
• Content Type: MISC

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Air Force Intelligence Dining out -- 12 September 1986
The US-Soviet Conflict: A Historical Perspective
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Air Force Intelligence and US intelligence overall have
come a long way back from the mid to late 1960s and the 1970s,
when our resources were cut to the bone, I served in Air Force
intelligence at a time when, because of the need to support our
effort in Vietnam, other US military programs were deeply hurt
and often crippled. Indeed, some of my most vivid memories of
serving in Plans and Intelligence at Whiteman are of stealing
light bulbs from other components because there weren't enough
to go around; of buying office supplies -- including maps --
with our personal funds; of equipment that we could not afford
to repair; and of personnel shortages so dramatic that I, as a
green second lieutenant with three months commissioned service,
was the entire intelligence component. Who could have imagined
such conditions in the Strategic Air Command? But the neglect
of our nation's strategic capabilities ranged from the absurd
-- the lack of office supplies for the 351st's plans and
intelligence staff -- to the tragic: our nation's failure to
understand and respond to the massive military buildup of our
principal adversary -- the Soviet Union.
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Now, nineteen years later and five years into the
restoration and further development of our defense and
intelligence capabilities, we see the nation beginning once
again to weary of the burden, to question the value and
importance of our defense efforts. We see too many opinion
leaders proclaiming that Moscow's economic problems will rein
in Soviet military activities, programs and ambitions.
Amid our competing priorities and foreign policy debates, I
believe there is a danger, especially among government
officials, the media, and the well informed -- the three, by
the way, are not always synonymous -- of losing perspective on
the true nature of the strategic competition.
Discussion in the United States of the Soviet challenge for
too many years has focused on a very narrow aspect of the
competition -- weapons programs and military capabilities,
technological advances and debates about both countries'
military spending, But I would submit that this approach,
while necessary, by itself has limited our national attention
too much to'a debate about numbers and budgets and too little
to why we are engaged in this confrontation in the first place,
the real nature of that contest, and its historical context.
Our fixation on numbers and on trying to cut defense is
certainly not new, At the Constitutional Convention, a
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proposal was made to restrict the Army to 5000 men, George
Washington nudged a companion and loudly whispered he would
support the measure if it were amended to provide that "no
foreign army should invade the United States at any time with
more than 3000 troops". I do not believe the Soviet Union
would today agree to the kind of American proportional
advantage sought by General Washington over a foreign adversary.
The numbers too often have crowded out history and meaning,
and our citizens and perhaps too many here in Washington
question the cost and risk of the competition because they
often do not understand the nature of the contest itself,
Indeed, only two weeks ago, Washington Post columnist Hobart
Rowen argued that to stop the decline of American global
economic power, "we must .,, stop pouring the nation's wealth
down a military drain. We must find ways of achieving arms
control and detente with the Soviet Union, and then regain the
means to finance a revitalization of our own economy and that
of the Third World." Such a perspective on the US-Soviet
contest, and it is a widely shared perspective, is tragically
short-sighted, over-simplified and deeply troubling.
My twenty years in intelligence, during which I had
countless opportunities to observe first-hand the work of
various elements of our government, have convinced me that
Washington is a city with historical amnesia. Too many
decisions have been made -- especially in the 1970s -- without
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knowledge of the relevant history and thus without perspective
and context, I am therefore a strong believer that US
intelligence, in addition to providing current information and
facts, must also assume responsibility for providing that
perspective. Because no one else can or will, all of us in
intelligence must, whenever appropriate, couch our assessments
and our forecasts in a broader historical context. Indeed, I
believe that when US intelligence itself has gone astray it has
often been because we too forgot the history and forgot the
context. And so, I would like to offer in the next ten minutes
a view of the US-Soviet conflict, a historical perspective,
that I believe is too rarely considered,
First, to the nature of the conflict, Some would have you
believe that this competition is yet another episode of greater
power rivalry growing out of nationalisms rooted in the last
century; that it derives from a search for security or to
overcome a national sense of inferiority; or a quest for
markets or spheres of influence, or a host of other traditional
modern European State objectives, More recently, you will have
heard that it is based in misunderstandings or failure at Yalta
or the hobgoblin fantasies of military industrial complexes on
both sides; that the rivalry is based on old fashioned
thinking, an out-dated cold war mentality, an exaggerated
suspicion of the other side's intentions, and just plain
misunderstanding and distrust of one another,
h
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This overintellectualized analysis reminds me of the time
Mickey Spillane attended a literary conference and heard a
scholar deliver a detailed paper, drawing profound conclusions
from the drinking habits of literary characters. In response.
Spillane shouted out that "Mike Hammer drinks beer and not
cognac because I can't spell cognac." Sometimes there is a
simple, straightforward explanation for things.
So it is with the Soviet challenge to America. I believe
that the proponents of the strained explanations I have
mentioned of the origin of the US-Soviet conflict all overlook
a single simple proposition: the US-Soviet struggle is, in
fact, deeply rooted in ideas and that the ideas and the
conflict are as old as recorded history. The threat posed by
the Soviet Union -- by Russia -- is the lineal descendent of
the some threat Western civilizations have faced for three and
a half thousand years: it is the threat posed by despotism and
despotic ideologies against the more or less steadily
developing concept that the highest goal of the State is to
protect and foster the creative capabilities and the liberties
of the individual, The contest between the United States and
the Soviet Union is, in my view, only the latest chapter in the'
age-old conflict that pitted the Athenians against Xerxes and
the Persians; the Romans against Attila and the Huns; Medieval
Europe against Genghis Khan and the Mongol horde; and the Holy
Roman Empire against Suleiman and the Ottomans, It is the
contest between two elemental and historically opposed ideas of
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the relationship between the individual and the State. The
ideas are irreconcilable.
The threat from the Soviet Union today is rooted in both a
totalitarian Marxist-Leninist ideology and in an ancient
culture and civilization fundamentally different from our own
-- despite the best efforts of some observers and to persuade
us that the Russian leaders must think as we do and inwardly
share the some spiritual values because they wear London-made
suits, like jazz, American cigarettes and fast cars, and are
personable and intelligent,
Lincoln once asked his cabinet, "how many legs would a dog
have if you called the tail a leg." They responded, "five."
He said, "no, only four, Calling a tail a leg don't make it
so," Hoping that Russia or the Soviet Union shares our values
and objectives doesn't make it so,
The Soviet state and the threat it poses are products of a
unique interaction of history and ideologies ancient and
modern. I believe it is vital to our citizens' understanding
of the challenge we face to appreciate just how different
Russia -- the Soviet Union -- is from us, to understand how
different is their history, culture, and outlook, This is an
approach unwelcome to some who see in it American ethnocentrism
or narrow-minded prejudice of some sort. But, ironically, it
is most eloquently and convincingly expressed by Russian-born
historians,
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Listen, for example, to Tiber Szamuely, For centuries,
"Most incomprehensible and alien of all, pervading and coloring
every Western description of Russia, was the awesome sway of an
omnipotent State exercising unlimited control over the persons,
the property, and the very thoughts of its subjects" -- and the
faithful servants of the monarchs of absolutist Europe were
among those who felt this to be a phenomenon beyond their
experience, There is a basic fact that today has been largely
forgotten or passed in silence: "every country of modern
Europe either was at one time a province of the Roman Empire or
received its religion from Rome. Russia is the sole
exception, It is the only country of geographical Europe that
owed virtually nothing to the common cultural and spiritual
heritage of the West."
Russia's history was one of aggression to acquire new
territory and, more often than not, a related struggle against
invaders, that for length, intensity, and ferocity has no
parallel in the annals of any other nation. This was Russia
for a thousand years, The cruel, relentless struggle never
abated, It was "the fierce struggle of a nation placed on the
frontier between Europe and Asia, on the great dividing line
between settled and nomadic society, between Christian, Moslem,
and Pagan," This struggle, combining national purpose, moral
fervour, aggression, self-defense, and everyday struggle for a
bare existence was the driving force behind the Russian
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people's travail. It was a permanent part of her life for most
of her history,
This was a national experience and a national existence
radically different from that of the West, It created a social
and political system, a national character, a mentality, a way
of life utterly dissimilar to the patterns evolved in Western
and Central Europe, A state of never ending war gave their
society its distinctive form.
In Russia, military service was obligatory and permanent.
In wartime, each and all were compelled to go to war -- "and
wartime was all the time." To gain an idea of the colossal
effort, compare it with medieval military practice in Europe,
At the battle of Crecy in 1346, the King of France commanded
the largest army yet seen in feudal Europe -- 12,000, and the
force of the First and greatest Crusade numbered 25 - 30,000,
And these campaigns were "short-lived spurts of energy that
left their begetters utterly exhausted." Yet, from the 1300s,
Russia raised and maintained a permanent armed force of 65,000
men, Russia, with a much smaller population than France,
maintained its huge army not just for an isolated campaign but
for 300 unbroken years, while at the same time conducting an
endless series of wars against more highly developed Western
neighbors and also colonizing a continent, The result was the
rise of a political system "based on the unquestioning
obedience and unlimited submission of the subjects. on the
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principle of the obligations owed by each and every subject to
the State, on the impressment into the State's service of all
the creative forces of the nation, and on the sacrifice of
private interest to the State's demand.
The Messianic Communism we see in the Soviet Union is not
unrelated to the centuries-old identification of Russia with
Orthodox Christianity, its cause with the cause of God, its
State power with the power of God, The State and the faith
became one. In 1510, this found expression in a monk's address
to the Tsar: "All Christian Empires have converged into thy
single one; two Romes have fallen, but the third stands and no
fourth can ever be, Thy Empire shall fall to no one," This
became the "Russian idea" -- dismissed over succeeding
centuries by Western Statesmen and journalists as hypocritical
mumbo jumbo. Yet, the conviction that Russia occupied a
special place in the world permeated every segment of the
Russian people -- the ultimate vindication of an otherwise
unbearable social and political system; The idea lives on
today,
Over the centuries, up to the present time, the Russian
idea developed into an exotic amalgam of emotions that struck
vibrantly upon the high-strung chords of the Russian soul: a
"deep national feeling, a sense of belonging to a nation set
apart from others by its own history; .., the conviction that
the individuals' duty toward the State .., transcended all
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other obligations ,,,; the idea that collectivism ... was
nobler than individualism; that idealism and other worldliness
were inherent in the Russian national (spirit) in contrast to
the gross materialism of the Western scheme of values; ,,,
consciousness, to the point of exaggeration, of the profound
difference between Russia and the West; the Messianic fervor
that imbued the 'Russian idea,' the conviction that the Russian
nation was entrusted with the mission of sharing with others
the revelation of unity and of true freedom which had been
vouchsafed to them alone, and of redeeming the world from the
bonds of individualism and materialism." And yet, for
centuries, Westerners have worked to convince themselves that
this was a State like any other, a people like themselves, with
a set of values like their own, And this despite countless
callous acts such as the recent hostage situations, the
shootdown of civilian airliners, and the daily treatment of
their own people.
A final note on the nature of our adversary and its view of
the West, Much has been made in recent years about technology
transfer to the USSR, Yet, industry and technology were
transplanted early on from the West to Russia, beginning with
Italian architecture in the 14th Century and carried forward by
Peter the Great. Imagine, if you will, the sight of the great
nearly seven-foot tall Tsar touring and working as a laborer in
Western Europe in the late 17th century to learn the ways of
the West, to hire Western technicians and craftsmen and to
in
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acquire whole industries and technologies and factories --
which he would bring back to Russia to begin to modernize that
backward State. And, this artifical creation was forced upon
an unwilling nation by Peter to overcome its military
weakness. The very act of modernizing Russia -- of
establishing and exploiting contacts with the West -- from the
beginning was to make Russia a great military power. Did Peter
intend that Westernization accompany modernization? He once
told a companion, "We shall need Europe for a few decades, and
then we can turn our backside to her." The sentiment was more
honest than it was to be accurate,
It is this unique State which we now confront -- a State
and a culture shaped by a thousand years of constant war,
sacrifice, and the conviction that Russia's destiny is to
establish a new world order, And still many question if they
can sustain their defense effort.
Will Durant once calculated that in the last 3,400 years of
recorded history, only 268 have seen no war. The monumental
conflicts I described at the outset were those between the
emerging civilizations of the West with one concept of the
relationship between an individual and the State, and the
despotisms of the East with a fundamentally different view,
When those Western civilizations grew tired or lost their will,
or for whatever reason let down their guard, destruction
followed, Edward Gibbon's words in The Decline and Fall of the
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Roman Empire still seem relevant today: "The Romans were
ignorant of the extent of their danger and the number of their
enemies. Beyond the Rhine and the Danube, the Northern
countries of Europe and Asia were filled with innumerable
tribes of hunters and shepherds, poor, voracious and turbulent:
bold In arms and impatient to ravage the fruits of industry
The endless column of barbarians pressed on the Roman
Empire with accumulated weight."
A thousand years of Russian history -- reinforced by
Marxism-Leninism -- tell the Soviet leadership that conflict is
inevitable, that the contest for supremacy is unending, that
one side will win and the other-will lose, and that destiny or
God or the forces of history will ensure Russia's victory.
President Kennedy some 25 years ago observed that we were
involved in along twilight struggle. We have now been in that
struggle for just 40 years. Compare that, if you will, with
the centuries of struggle between Rome and the barbarians, the
two and a half century struggle between Europe and the Tatar
horde, and the 200 year struggle against the Ottomans. It is a
long struggle that stretches before us and the Russians are
banking on the fact that we lack the will to sustain the
competition.
As a final thought, therefore, I would suggest to you that
the chief threat posed by the Soviet Union is not necessarily
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in the vastness of its military forces -- though vast they are,
but in its despotic ideology and, like the barbarians facing
Rome, in the relentlessness of their assault, The question of
inestimable historical importance as we consider our national
priorities, examine our defense needs and our foreign
commitments, and strive to counter the Soviet ideological and
strategic threat is whether we will remember the origin and
nature of the contest, and the lessons of history: that the
whole historical experience and ideology of our adversary
teaches him that conflict is constant and inevitable. and that
eventual victory in the competition is Russia's destiny and the
justification for its centuries of hardship and sacrifice, It
is our job in intelligence to remind our leaders of these
historical realities.
Despite our fondest hopes to fulfill Isaiah's prophesy, all
of human history -- and especially all of Russian history --
points to our need and the need of our children and their
children for swords as well as plowshares. It is not a
forecast of an altogether felicitous future -- but it is a
forecast of a free one, And American intelligence must and
will play a central role in keeping it free,
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