GENERAL SECRETARY MIKHAIL GORBACHEV AND THE SOVIET MILITARY: ASSESSING HIS IMPACT SO FAR AND THE POTENTIAL FOR FUTURE CHANGES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90M00005R001100030010-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 17
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: August 2, 1988
• Content Type: REPORT

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GENERAL SECRETARY MIN-IAIL GORBACHEV AND THE sovIEr MILITARY:
ASSESSING HIS IMPACT SO FAR AND THE POTENTIAL FOR =IRE CHANGES
THE DEFENSE POLICY PANEL
of the
commTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
August 2, 1988
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PREFACE
During the second session of the 100th Congress, the Defense Policy
Panel conducted hearings on July 12-14, 1988 on the impact that General
Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms have had upon the Soviet military and
the implications for U. S. national security. Testimony was solicited from
the Intelligence Agencies and non-governmental Soviet experts. The
witnesses included: Robert M. Gates, Deputy Director of Central
Intelligence; Lt. General Leonard H. Perroots, Director, Defense
Intelligence Agency; Curtis W. Kaman, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary
for Intelligence and Research, State Department; Edward L. Warner III,
Senior Defense Analyst, the RAND Corporation; Phillip A. Karber, Vice
President, DOM International, Inc.; Jack Snyder, Associate Professor of
Political Science, Columbia University; and Steven Meyer, Associate
Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
INTRODUCTION
The role of the military is clearly critical to Gorbachev's effort to
restructure the Soviet system. Gorbachev must have the support of the
military to pursue his arms control objectives and implement "new thinking"
in foreign policy. He must also reduce the burden of defense expenditures
on the Soviet economy for perestroika (restructuring) to succeed fully.
The growing debate over military doctrine, as well as Gorbachev's
reshuffling of the Soviet military leadership, demonstrates the General
Secretary's determination to extend his reform campaign to the military.
The unprecedented visit to the United States in early July by the Chief of
the Soviet General Staff, Marshall Sergei Akhromeyev, also points up the
importance that the evolving relationship between Gorbochev and the military
will have for the security of the United States and its Allies.
Telling the difference between what the Soviets say they will do and
what they actually do wasn't too difficult in the past because of the large
gap between Soviet propaganda and the reality of Soviet military power.
Now, however, it will be necessary to discriminate between Gorbachev's
seemingly sincere efforts to change Soviet military behavior and the
imperfect realization of those efforts.
The Defense Policy panel asked witnesses to address two general
questions:
What, if any, have been the concrete and operational manifestations in
Soviet military behavior that might be attributable to Gorbachev's
reform campaign?
Secondly, what kinds of operational changes in Soviet military behavior
would convincingly demonstrate that Gorbachev's reforms had taken hold
in the Soviet military?
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This report will also address these two issues in an effort to establish
reasonable benchnarks for evaluating Gorbachev's success in reforming the
military and assessing the opportunities and risks that perestroika in the
military poses to the United States.
WHAT GORBACHEV INHERITED
The Brezhnev era is often described as the "golden age" of the
military. Brezhnev's personal power depended strongly on institutional
support, and the military's loyalty was rewarded with annual four to five
percent budgetary increases in the period 1965-75. In April 1973, Defense
Minister Andrei Grechko was elevated to full membership in the Politburo,
becoming only the second professional military officer to achieve it.
Several witnesses noted that power was diffused or "feudalized" under
Brezhnev. Major party and state institutions gained considerable policy
control and autonomy in return for their support of Brezhnev's personal
reign. As demonstrated by Figure I, provided to the Panel by Philip Karber
of BEIM International, the Soviet military took full advantage of the "shower
of rubles" and grew substantially.
The Soviet military also developed an offense-oriented, war-fighting
strategy at both the nuclear and conventional level. Soviet military
doctrine and exercises emphasized the critical importance of seizing the
initiative quickly -- by preemption in the event of nuclear war and massive
blitzkrieg tactics in a conventional conflict. In the eyes of the West, the
Brezhnev miltary grew larger in almost every dimension and deployed its
forces in a most threatening manner.
The defense burden proved to be too great even for Brezhnev and his
immediate successors. Chronic economic stagnation led Brezhnev to limit the
growth rate for defense to about 2 percent during 1977-83. The military,
however, became increasingly alarmed over the Western buildup triggered by
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and led by President Reagan. Marshal
Nikolai Ogarkov, then Chief of the Soviet General Staff, pushed hard for
more resources, but to no avail. He was summarily dismissed in September
1984, bringing to an end the "fat cat" era for the Soviet military.
Brezhnev also initiated a shift in military thinking that Gorbachev has
accelerated in the current debate over military doctrine. Clearly aimed at
influencing incoming President Carter, Brezhnev asserted in January 1977
that the Sovet Union did not seek military superiority and that its military
doctrine was "defensive" in nature. Moreover, as Brezhnev and other senior
political and military leaders subsequently amplified, nuclear war was
unwinnable and any use of nuclear weapons would inevitably lead to a
catastrophic all-out nuclear war. Consequently, the Soviet Union pledged
that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons and called on other
nuclear powers to follow its lead.
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Ted Warner of the RAND Corporation notes, however, that these themes
were struck on the political side of military doctrine, not the
military-technical or operational side which deals with "concrete measures
to prepare for and, if necessary, conduct military operations in the event
of war." The Soviet military apparently drew considerably different lessons
from the emergence of nuclear parity. Its strategy for fighting a nuclear
war remained the same, but its estimation of the likelihood of nuclear war
changed. Soviet writings and exercises on conflict in the European theater
no longer assumed automatic escalation from conventional to nuclear war. As
a result, the Soviet military refined its operational doctrine for
conducting "theater strategic operations," that is, high-speed, large-scale
offensive operations aimed at winning a conventional war after repelling an
initial enemy attack (in line with the "defensive" nature of Soviet
strategy). In keeping with the "offensive" nature of its military-technical
doctrine, of course, Soviet force deployments retained their threatening
posture.
WHAT IS GORBACHEV'S AGENDA FOR MILITARY REFCBM?
Gorbachevuoved quickly to reassert civilian control over the military
when he came to pawer in March 1985. The military was conspicuously
underrepresented during Chernenko's funeral. Since then, the top leadership
has been thorougly reshuffled, including the departures of 10 of 16 deputy
defense ministers, 3 of 5 service chiefs and 8 of 16 military district
commanders. Gorbachev also has given his Defense Ministers -- Sergei
Sokolov, who was abruptly dismissed after a young West German pilot crossed
Soviet territory undetected and landed his Cessna in Red Square, and Dimitri
Yazov -- only candidate member status in the Politburo.
Gorochev's determination to establish party supremacy were clearly
reflected in the party program adopted at the 27th Party Congress in
February 1986:
...the CPSU considers it necessary in the future to strengthen its
organizing and directing influence on the life and activities of the
Armed forces.
It is under the Party's guidance that policy in the area of the
country's defense and security and Soviet military doctrine, which is
purely defensive and directed at defending against an attack from
without, are developed and implemented.
In addition, Gorbachev has encouraged civilian defense experts, particularly
at the USA-Canada Institute and the International Department of the Central
Committee staff, to engage the military in a debate over doctrine. Unlike
Brezhnev, he wants competing centers of military analysis and threat
assessment.
Virtually all of the witnesses maintained that Gorbachev's reform agenda
for the military is driven primarily by domestic concerns, not military or
strategic factors. The equation is simple: in order for his economic
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reforms to succeed, Gorbachev must shift resources from the defense sector
to civilian use.
CIA and DIA estimate that defense, which Gorbachev called a "great
burden" on the economy in early 1987, consumes between 15 and 17 percent of
the Soviet GNP. the United States, in contrast, spends about 6% of its GNP
on defense. The defense burden is considerably higher in many critical
sectors. For example, about 40 percent of the machine-building and
metalworking industries is devoted to defense, yet Gorbachev desperately
needs to double the rate of civilian production if he is to modernize the
Soviet Union's ancient industrial base.
Philip Rarber noted that the Soviet Union also faces a manpower
shortage. The annual draft cohort of available 18 year olds has dropped by
about 700,000 (to about 1.8 million) in the last decade and the Slavic areas
of the soviet Union already experience very tight labor markets. More
importantly, perhaps, the Soviet econamy is chronically short of young,
well-educated professionals. It could benefit from reductions in the large
Soviet officer corps needed to train and field 5 million men.
While recognizing that Gorbachev is certainly aware of the strategic and
foreign policy implications of his reform campaign, the Defense Policy Panel
concluded that Gorbachev's personal agenda for military reform is driven
primarily by economic concerns. From this perspective, Gorbachev's claim
that the Soviet Union will not deploy military forces beyond what is
required for a "reasonable, sufficient defense" is aimed as much at his own
military as it is at Western audiences.
According to several witnesses, Gorbachev apparently views military
doctrine as a means of scaling down the claims of the military upon scarce
resources. Gorbachev plans to do this by redefining the Western threat and
altering the way the military generates its defense requirements based on
the redefined threat. As MIT Professor Steven Meyer told the Panel,
Gorbachev's
new thinking [on security issues] -- including two of its core
principles: reasonable sufficiency and non-provocative defense -- is
most certaintly not a framework of force analysis concepts or
operational critieria. It is not an explicit blueprint for force
development. Rather, it is a political tool that is intended to enable
the Soviet leader to recapture the Soviet defense agenda.
Thus, the debate over military doctrine should be viewed as a political
struggle over who determines "how much is enough" for Soviet security.
Gorbachev clearly believes that the military's robust definition, which had
been accepted by his predecessors, will deny perestroika the resources it
needs to succeed. Asserting party control over military doctrine,
therefore, reflects Gorbachev's determination to reduce, by restrurcturing,
the Soviet military establishment.
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Gorbachev's arms control policies, according to several witnesses, are
inextricably linked to his effort to change military doctrine. A central
element of Gorbachev's "new thinking" is that the Western threat can be
reduced by political means -- that is, arms control -- which then reduces
Soviet defense requirements, even if the latter are still guaged by "old
thinking." For Gorbachev, arms control can cut the size of the Western
threat and a revised military doctrine can scale back the military's
response to that threat. The result is the same in both cases -- a smaller
defense burden or, at a minimum, avoiding the costs of a military buildup.
Even the latter seems important to Gorbachev, judging from the tenacity of
Soviet negotiators in the Defense and Space talks.
At its most fundamental level, the success of Gorbachev's effort to
reform, in effect to cut back, the military depends largely on political
factors. Is Gorbachev powerful enough to impose his agenda on the
military? The decisive factor is probably not Gorbachev's power vis-a-vis
the military but Gorbachev's standing among his colleagues on the Politburo.
The military as an institution has clearly lost the clout it enjoyed
under Brezhnev. Nevertheless, military complaints over Gorbachev's reform
agenda would provide heavy ammo to Gorbachev's conservative opponents, as
former Soviet leader Ehruschev discovered in 1964.
So far, as several witnesses noted, there probably is no consensus
behind Gorbachev's "new thinking" on security issues. The danger to him
would rise sharply if there was a consensus against his reform agenda. That
could happen if the results of Gorbachev's "new thinking" on security issues
are disappointing. But, as the Panel discovered, it is far too soon to
determine what the operational impact of Gorbachev's military reform agenda
will actually be, much less whether the return to his reform campaign meets
political expectations.
WHAT IMPACT HAS GORBACHEV HAD UPON THE soviEr mILITARy?
The Defense Policy Panel asked witnesses to identify any concrete and
operational changes in military behavior, including procurement, deployment
and training practices, that could be attributed to Gorbachev's reform
campaign. The answer was unanimous. To date, there have been no
significant, identifiable changes traceable to Gorbachev's drive to scale
back defense spending. As the RAND Corporation's Ted Warner has observed:
Despite the varying formulations regarding Soviet military doctrine and
the growing pressures on defense spending, the Soviet Union has
sustained a steady, across-the-board modernization and expansion of its
armed forces over the past ten years. Throughout all five services, in
both intercontinental range and regional/theater forces, and with regard
to both nuclear and conventional arms, the Soviet Union has relentlessly
improved its military capabilities.
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In fact, not only has Gorbachev failed to suppress defense spending, but
it has actually increased According to preliminary intelligence
estimates, Soviet military spending grew by about 3 per cent in both 1986
and 1987, almost double the growth rate of the 1981-6 period. Several
witnesses attributed this to the current five-year plan, which had been
formulated under Brezhnev, and the start-up costs of several big ticket
items such as the SS-24 and SS-25 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Nevertheless, the conclusion is inescapable that so far the military's
budget has not been nicked by Gorbachev.
So if the Soviet defense budgets and weapons procurements have not been
affected by Gorbachev's reforms, what has all the ferment been about?
Again, the answer from all the witnesses was unanimous. Gorbachev's
inititatives so far have been largely at the broad policy level and, while
not penetrating yet to the operational level, could potentially bring real
changes in the way the Soviet military does business. Gorbachev appears to
have seized the agenda. Now he is at the critical point of trying to force
implementation of his policy directions. All agreed that it is too soon to
tell if he will succeed. Although witnesses differed over what would be
convincing evidence that he had succeeded, most agreed on what he had
accomplished so far.
Getting on board with "new thinking." Senior military officials
generally supported Gorbachev's economic reform campaign from the beginning.
They recognize that oerestroika is necessary if the Soviet Union is to
remain a first-class power and compete militarily, particularly in high
technology weapons, with the West. There were indications, however, that
the military might have thought it was exempt from the reform campaign. If
so, Gorbachev's reaction to the Cessna debacle ended that illusion. The
chief of the Soviet air defense force was summarily retired; others were
demoted or reprimanded. Yazav, a relatively junior and newly appointed
deputy minister in charge of personnel, replaced Sokolov, the first Minister
of Defense not to die in office.
Yazov quickly laid down Gorbachev's markers in
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Generals, admirals, and officers have still not profoundly grasped the
essence of oerestroika, have not defined their role and place in it,
have not made out that they must begin it above all with themselves.
They are not themselves serving as examples of how to observe military
discipline and the norms of socialist morality, or haw to heighten
professional qualifications and ideological elan.
Before Is:mg, the party line according to Yazav was clear: "Perestroika in
the armed forces must be understood as truly revolutionary transformations,
the goal of which is to make the arm capable of more effectively resolving
problems that are new in principle."
Soviet military officers now write of military perestroika, but, as
several witnesses observed, the reforms they advocate tend to be limited to
personnel changes, improved training and discipline, increased efficiency
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and the like, not the restructured forces suggested by civilian analysts.
As Columbia Professor Jack Snyder told the Panel,
Reformers within the military are thinking about streamlining the
Soviets' musclebound force posture and preparing for a contingency in
which the Warsaw Pack might have to fight temporarily on the defensive.
Worrying that the civilian leadership may balk at allowing the Soviet
military to seize the initiative at the outset of a war, they are
thinking more seriously about the possibility that the Pact would have
to absorb NATO's offensive, especially its air offensive, before going
over to a decisive counterattack. . . .Like the civilians' reform
concepts, the ideas of the military reformers require domestic economic
reform, but reform of a radically different kind. The arms race in high
technology weapons which the military reformers envision would fit not
with a market economy and a radically reduced defense burden, but with a
less far-reaching administrative reform in with the military sector
would continue to enjoy its priority status in a streamlined command
economy.
The military's newfound enthusiasm for reform is, according to Professor
Meyers, a "classic example of how political discourse inside the Soviet
Union is carried out: you use the other guy's words, but you redefine
them." This, of course, increases the difficulty of discerning if
Gorbachev's reform agenda has taken hold.
Military perestroika appears likely to have considerable impact, but of
the "modernizing" rather than "restructuring" variety. BEIM International's
Phillip Karber notes that the Soviet Union appears to be moving from its
current division-regiment-batallion structure to a unified corps-brigade
type of organization. This approach, which has been adopted in Hungary and
touted there as a model for Soviet forces, could, according to Karber,
reduce the number of Soviet divisions by 30% over the next 20 years. This
reorganization could, theoretically, maintain the Soviets' force capability
while reducing manpower requirements by 3-5 percent. Reform of this type,
the Panel notes, holds little prospect for increased Western security.
Arms Control Initiatives. For all witnesses, the most striking example
of Gorbachev's "new thinking" in action was his arms control policy.
Gorbachev's personal stamp was seen in several areas: the tactical
flexibility the Soviets displayed in the INF negotiations, first insisting
upon and then dropping its demand on linkage to other issues; acceptance of
the principle of asymmetric reductions; willingness to accept intrusive
verification, including on-site inspections; and the willingness to
experiment with unilateral arms control gambits, such as the Soviet
unilateral nuclear test moratorium of 1986-7. Gorbachev's predecessors
might have taken one or two of these steps; only Gorbachev would have done
them all, much less forced them upon the Soviet General Staff.
Professor Meyers, in fact, noted the "almost frenetic pace" of
Gorbachev's arms control initiatives which was characteristic of a "try and
see" strategy:
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Far from being fully implemented, the new thinking is undergoing a trial
by fire in a tentative, piecemeal, fashion. While the new thinking is
supposed to validate Gorbachev's arms control policy (i.e., resort to
political means to enhance security rather than military-technical
means), he is simultaneously using his arms control accomplishments to
validate the new thinking (by demonstrating its ability to reduce "the
threat").
In a sense, Gorbachev is trying to create a new reality -- that is, a
reduced threat environment -- through a self-fullfing policy, namely
negotiated arms treaties.
Reduced Reliance on Military Power. Gorbachev was also credited with
changing the primacy that Soviet leaders had traditionally given to military
power in its arsenal of foreign policy tools. The Soviet Union's withdrawal
from Afghanistan, its apparent pressure on Vietnam to start withdrawing from
Cambodia and its expressed willingness at the Moscow Summit to work for an
Angolan settlement indicated to all of the witnesses that Gorbachev differed
considerably from his predecessors in the utility he attached to military
power.
Civilian defense specialists have often cited the deployment of SS-20
intermediate range ballistic missiles under Brezhnev as an example of the
counterproductive effect of overreliance on military means. Brezhnev's
error, it is argued, was his acquiescence in the military's
business-as-ususal modernization of its aging SS-4's and 5's without
recognizing the risk that the "growing Soviet threat" might provoke NATO
into a military buildup that jeopardized Soviet security. For these
civilian reformers, this is the flip side of arms control policy: Soviet
force deployments in excess of "legitimate needs" can be as dangerous to
Soviet interests as Western deployments unconstrained by arms control.
Even though Soviet foreign policies appear to reflect a changed calculus
about the utility of military force, the Defense Policy Panel shares the
cautionary note struck by virtually all the witnesses appearing before it.
That is, this trend has not extended very far throughout Soviet foreign
policy and, in any case, is easily reversible. Soviet assistance to its
client states has not appreciably changed under Gorbachev and its
willingness to resolve through negotiation several regional conflicts has
yet to be demonstrated. In short, Gorbachev himself appears less enchanted
with the utility of military power, but as long as the Soviet's military
capability remains unchanged, this is too frail a reed for the prudent
Western statesman.
Debate over Military Doctrine. The very existence of a debate over
military doctrine between civilian experts and military professionals was
frequently cited as evidence of Gorbachev's impact on the military. Many of
the doctrinal changes, however, predated Gorbachev and reflect the Soviet
leadership's acceptance of the strategic implications of nuclear parity.
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Gorbachev and the military now largely agree on the political side of
military doctrine. Both espouse the same general themes: Soviet military
doctrine is defensive in nature; the Soviet Union seeks only parity, not
military superiority; nuclear war is unwinnable; and the Soviet Union
rejects preemptive strategies and pledges no-first-use of nuclear weapons.
Civilian experts and military officers, however, appear to differ on the
meaning of "reasonable sufficiency." Soviet civilian reformers argue that
military forces should be capable of carrying out only defensive tasks, not
large offensive operations. The military, in contrast, tends to speak of
"defense sufficiency" which, as Akhromeyev has said, should be determined by
the "level of the threat." This, of course, is defined in a robust manner.
He describes NATO as "preparing for an extended conventional war using new
systems of armaments," ready to launch a "surprise attack" and "massive
military operations" swiftly "extended throughout the depth of Soviet
territory and that of its allies." Obviously, a threat this large would
justify a larger force structure than Gorbachev has in mind.
Civilian and military thinkers, however, appear to think alike at the
operational level for strategic nculear forces, witness Akhromeyev's active
support for Gorbachev's arms control initiatives. The military undoubtedly
does not buy Gorbachev's expressed enthusiasm for ridding the world of
nuclear weapons, but short of that, there seem to be no significant
differences. Nuclear war is unwinnable; deep reductions to equal levels is
acceptable; SDI deployments upset strategic stability; and so on. Gorbachev
probably is quicker to shift negotiating positions and less concerned about
instrusive verification than the military. But on the whole, they probably
see eye-to-eye on strategic issues.
Clear differences do exist at the operational level for conventional
forces, which consume 80-85% of the Soviet defense budget. The civilian
specialists have not spelled out how they would implement "non-offensive (or
non-provocative or defensive) defense," in part because they do not have
access to military data. It is also probably the case that it is easier for
outside experts to analyze strategic nuclear issues than conventional ones.
So the civilian reformers argue that a non-provocative force should not be
capable of large-scale offensive operations but instead be limited to
"defensive tasks." They do not, however, describe precisely what these
"tasks" are and what level and types of forces are "reasonably sufficient"
to accomplish them.
Military professionals, on the other hand, are more explicit. For
Akhromeyev, the best defense is a good counteroffense: any aggression will
invite "crushing retaliatory blows" delivered with "maximum decisiveness and
activity." During his U.S. visit, Akhromeyev argued that the Warsaw Pact
had to mount a "retaliatory defense," that is, be prepared to repulse
enemyattacks and undertake retaliatory actions.
Col. Gen. V. Earpov wrote in Military Thought, the General Staff's
journal, that while Soviet aims were "strictly defensive," this "in no way
means that the Soviet Armed Forces will conduct only defensive operations."
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Furthermore, "only active, decisive operations...can lead to victory" and a
*most important principle of waging war is the active, offensive character
of strategic operations."
Shortly after becaming Defense Minister, Yazov wrote that "it is
impossible to rout an aggressor with defense alone." He added:
After an attack has been repelled, the troops and naval forces must be
able to conduct a decisive offensive. The switch will be in the form of
a counteroffensive.
This emphasis on seizing the initiative is clearly reflected in Soviet
military-technical doctrine for "theater strategic operations." The major
components of a Soviet-style theater war -- initial ground and antiair
defense, armor-heavy blitzkrieg counteroffense, air attack against enemy's
air capabilities, assault landings on critical rear facilities, and so on --
are often simulated in Soviet/Warsaw Pact exercises. And, as the Defense
Policy Panel noted earlier, the Soviet Union continues the across-the-board
modernization and expansion of its armed forces that is necessary to sustain
this offensive strategy for fighting a conventional war.
More "defensive" exercises? Several Soviet analysts have suggested that
the Soviet Union may be moving towards a more defensive posture because of
the significant growth in the portion of Warsaw Pact exerciaca dedicated to
defense. Philip Karber of BDM International claimed that the amount of time
spent on defensive maneuver had approximately doubled and was nag close to
50 percent. Other witnesses also reported a similar increase, but not quite
as large.
Despite Akhrameyev's recent injunction to U.S. officials that they
should *watch our exercises" for signs of a more defensive orientation, few
witnesses drew that conclusion from the recent trend in Soviet exercise
play. Karber noted, for example, that during a recent exercise half of the
Warsaw Pact front was in a defensive formation and the other half was trying
to encircle the opposing force. For Karber and several others appearing
before the Panel, the increased attention to defensive play simply reflected
the Soviet military's rational response to improving NATO capabilities
during the 1980s.
This is not to say that changing exercise patterns is not important.
Little or no defensive play suggests a total preoccupation with offense or,
at best, preemption; little or no offensive play, along the lines of
Switzerland's "territorial defense," suggests a preoccupation with defense.
A, mixture of offensive and defensive operations -- as in recent Warsaw Pact
exercisca and in NATO exercises for same time -- sends an ambiguous message.
One side's counteroffensive looks suspiciously like a preemptive first
strike to the other side. And since most military professionals on both
sides still appear to believe that the best defense is a good offense,
*watching" each other's exercises will never be conclusive in itself.
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Declining Readiness? A few witnesses suggested that the declining
readiness of Soviet forces in Europe might suggest movement toward a more
defensive strategy since the Soviets would be less prepared for a
bolt-out-of-the-blue offensive. Phillip Earber, for example, believes that
Soviet forces are now manned at about 80 percent of wartime strength, a drop
of 10-15 percent or so from the 19705.
Other witnesses, however, pointed out that the number of Soviet troops
deployed in Europe had not actually declined. Rather, the Soviet Union, as
part of its on-going modernization efforts, had added more equipment and
logistical support in creating a larger wartime force. Manpower remained
relatively constant, authorized warfighting capability increased and
peacetime readiness declined. The Defense Policy Panel agreed that it was
difficult to extrapolate a more defensive orientation fram readiness trends.
Summary. The answer to the Defense Policy Panel's first question -- Has
Gorbachev caused any conrete, operational changes in Soviet military
behavior? -- appears to be no. Gorbachev seems to have had no impact yet on
Soviet military procurement policies. Same changes in deployment and
training practices have occurred, but not in ways significantly different
from what would be expected as Soviet military-technical doctrine evolves.
Gorbachev, however, has changed the terms of debate. He has introduced
a doctrinal justification for a reduced Soviet military establishment and
actively pursued arms control initiatives intended to validate his new
doctrine. The Soviet military, for its part, has been forced to justify its
resource claims in the new language of "sufficiency" and "defense." TO
date, the military has resisted significant operational changes because
Gorbachev's arms control policies, to date, have not signficantly reduced
the "Western threat."
This struggle over national priorities is far frau over, as Gorbachev is
continuing to press hard on the arms control front. During the month of
July, for example, Gorbachev proposed a new four-stage approach to
conventional arms control, called for a Pan-European Reykjavik-like Summit
and floated an extremely intrusive verification regime for cruise missiles.
Continued success in the arms control arena could lay the basis for
significant operational changes in the Soviet military. Defining what a
"significant" change is, however, is not a simple proposition, as the
Defense Policy Panel discovered.
WHAT ARE THE INDICATORS OF SIGNIFICANT MILITARY REFORM?
Determining whether significant operational changes in Soviet military
practices have occured is likely to remain a difficult analytic task.
Despite all the claims of glasnost, it is clear that Gorbachev has not
eliminated the gap between what the Soviets sametimes say and what they
actually do, especially in the area of security issues. For example, the
Soviet Union's top weapons procurement officer, Army Gen. Vitaly Shabanov,
claimed in an interview on July 26 1988 that Soviet military spending had
declined in recent years in line with its new "defensive" strategy. Yet, as
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the Intelligence Agencies testified, their preliminary estimates indicate
precisely the opposite. Soviet military spending appears to have increased
by about 3% in the last two years.
In addition, it is often difficult to ascertain what the implications of
an allegedly "defensive" force adjustment really are. As discussed earlier,
increased defensive play during command exercises may only reflect a greater
appreciation of the opponent's capabilities, not a shift in strategic
orientation. A reduction in deployed manpower may represent a reduced
threat or could be the product of a personnel reorganization aimed at
creating a "leaner and meaner" force. Even a Soviet shift away from its
admittedly excessive numbers of tanks -- long the "Queen" of the Soviet Army
-- may not mean a shift from an "offensive" straegy, but only a recognition
that other factors, such as readiness or high technology weapons, are more
important in fighting a modern conventional war.
The analytic difficulty of determining indications of significant
military reform was all too evident in the responsco to the Defense Policy
Panel inquiry. Phillip Farber of BE international said that he would
believe that the Soviets were "really serious" about moving towards a
defensive orientation when he saw half their forces (about 13 divisions)
leaving Eastern Europe. He also stated that the only "true test" of their
sincerity was the "physical restructuring" of their forces. Even these
seemingly rigorous standards might not be sufficient for Mr. Earber, who
later stated:
If they [the Soviets] cut the Army in half but kept the forward forces
in Central Europe backed up by a reasonable reserve that they have in
the Western military districts, they would still pose a signficant
offensive threat to Central Europe, whether they had a defensive
doctrine [or not]. . . . As long as they keep a strong force in Central
Europe, I think they will always be tempted to say we look [like] easier
prey in a crisis if they preempt while we are getting ready rather than
taking a blow from us or waiting until we were fully prepared or ready.
Other witnesses suggested several unilateral measures -- withdrawing two
armies from the Central Front, a freeze on defense spending or a 25%
reduction in Soviet armed forces -- that would suggest to them that a real
shift had occurred. Columbia Professor Jack Snyder, however, would be
convinced if the Soviet Union introduced true market reframs into the
economy that ended the military's priority claim to resources.
Underlying this apparent analytic confusion may be a fundamental
disagreement about what a defensively-oriented force structure might
actually look like. RAND Corporation's Ted Warner argues that the "real
proof" of the Soviets' adoption of a defensive strategy would be "reduction
and restructuring of a serious nature." He does not, however, define what
actions would be "serious." Mr. Farber is not even convinced "there is such
a thing as a defensive design force structure" because it is not so much the
attacker's capabilities, but rather his ability to use decisively what he
has, that determines the course of the battle.
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Nevertheless, most of the witnesses seem to believe that some, as yet
undefined, combination of reduction and restructuring measures could
reliably indicate that the Soviet Union had indeed put into effect
Gorbachev's injunction to deploy only those forces sufficient to mount an
effective defense. While recognizing that Soviet watchers must develop more
precise and specific indicators, the Defense Policy Panel concluded that
movement in the following areas would provide reasonable tests of Soviet
intentions.
Conventional Arms Control. Several witnesses argued that the West
needed to test the seriousness of Gorbachev's initiatives through arms
control, much as they were in the INF and START negotiations. In most
cases, however, it was not the seriousness of Gorbachev's intentions that
was in question; rather, it was the ability of the United States and its
Allies to engage the Soviet Union. Phillip Farber, for example, argued that
it bordered on an "alliance disgrace" that the "West has not met its awn
mandate two years ago for bold new initiatives to the East on conventional
arms control." Even those who called for a concrete are control proposal
from the Soviets that detailed asymmetric reductions to equal forces
recognized that the Soviet Union appeared far ahead of the United States in
preparing for serious talks on conventional arms control.
Unilateral Force Reductions. As mentioned earlier, a few witnesses
believed that only large, unilateral force reductions by the Soviet Union
could convince them that the Soviet Union was in fact moving towards a
defensive posture. In addition, same demands that the United States testthe
Soviets through arms control appeared, on closer examination, to be barely
disguised demands that the Warsaw Pact "negotiate" its forces down to
current NATO levels. As Figure 2 (provided by Phillip Karber of BEIM
International) indicates, the existing force asymmetries are large and
numerous. Moreover, many Western military analysts believe that NATO's
forces are barely sufficient to perform their current mission. Thus, their
challenges to the Soviet Union to reduce Pact levels to equal ceilings look
muck like -- from the Soviet perspective -- a demand for unilateral
reductions.
Virtually all of the witnesses noted that senior Soviet military
officials, while accepting the need for asymmetrical reductions, have
repeatedly stated their apposition to unilateral moves by the Soviet Union.
During his recent visit, Marshal Akromeyev told. American audiences that
large-scale cuts and restructuring must be undertaken on a mutual and
reciprocal basis. General Shabanov told the Washington Post on July 26,
1988: "There's one one point I want to emphasize most emphatically. This
effort [to reduce spending on offensive weapons] cannot be unilateral."
Several witnesses also believed that Gorbachev was not politically
capable of making deep unilateral cuts, citing the political demise of
former Soviet leader Khrushchev as inhibiting precedent for Gorbachev.
Khruschev, determined to free up resources by adopting a nuclear-dependent
strategy ("More Bang for the Ruble"), cut the size of the Soviet military by
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almost 40% (almost 2 million men) and demobilized 36 out of 175 divisions.
Charges that Ehurschev was jeopardizing Soviet security figured prominently
in later Soviet accounts of his ouster by Brezhnev. The latter, of course,
presided over the "golden era" of the Soviet military.
A few witnesses seem attracted to the notion that anything the Soviet
Union might do unilaterally -- such as the rumoured withdrawal of two
divisions from Hungary -- was almost by definition not militarily
significant. If it were militarily significant, the argument went,
Gorbachev would not have had the political clout to implement it without
reciprial actions from the West. Others, however, pointed out several
possible actions, including thinning out Soviet forces in the Eastern
theater and slowing down the modernization of strategic air defenses, that
Gorbachev could take that would produce real savings but not affect the
military balance in Central Europe.
Unilateral moves of this nature would demonstrate that Gorbachev's
reform agenda was taking hold and that he was capable of dealing seriously
in conventional arms control talks. Deep, unilateral cuts in the face of
NATO's not-inconsiderable forces are probably too risky for Gorbachev.
Forcing the military to trim its "excess fat" in less important areas
probably is not. Yet the latter could set the stage for more significant
actions later on.
Restructuring. While far from agreement on what actually would
constitute a "defensive" force structure, most witnesses believed that the
Soviet Union could reconfigure or "restructure" its forces to make them less
"offensive" and therefore less threatening. For example, Professor Snyder's
model would envision each side trying to:
...re-create the World War I stalemate...by emphasizing in one's force
posture barriers and fortifications, by not having sufficient armor and
heavy artillery to break through those barriers and fortifications, and
finally by having air power that was slanted in the direction of air
defense and slanted away fram the direction of deep-strike,
ground-attack aircraft tht would have an incentive to preempt, for
example, against the air bases and command and control of the opponent.
Other suggestions along these lines included repositioning logistical
stockpiles to the rear, reducing manning levels of front-line troops,
removing bridging eqpipment and tactical pipelines from weapons
inventories, and even pulling back forces from the immediate border area.
The same pressures that make deep unilateral cuts unlikely also appear
to work against any signficant unilateral restructuring by the Soviet
Union. NATO's forces also reflect the "best-defense-is-a-good-offense"
philosophy. TO demand that Warsaw Pact forces move towards a defensive
strategy while NATO is implementing concepts such as forward defense, deep
strike interdiction and competitive strategies may well be setting an
unreasonable standard. Defining a defensive force structure is difficult
enough. Expecting one side to adopt it while the other does not is setting
a standard that cannot be met.
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It must also be kept in mind that restructuring is no over-night
matter. Professor Meyer observed that:
...changes in Soviet army operations are implemented over a very long
time-line. Tactical and operational innovations are first tested by
units in interior military districts. The results are evaluated and
modifications are subjected to further study and testing. Once changes
have been approved it takes many years to rework manuals and bring all
the forces into line (keep in mind that the sheer mass of Soviet ground
forces represents a tremendous amount of inertia.) Thus, it is
unreasonable to expect to see any major program or operational impact
after only a few years of "new thinking."
In short, changing the way the Soviet military really does business is a
long-time process. Not only can short-term fixes, such as increased
defensive play in cammand exercies, be easily reversed, they also may
represent simply-modernization programs, not shifts in basic orientation or
philosophy.
CONCLUSIONS
In sum, the Defense Policy Panel concludes:
1. Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev's reform agenda for the Soviet
military appears genuine and has potentially signficant implications for the
security of the United States and its Allies. Economic concerns, namely the
need to shift resources from defense to civilian use, appear to be driving
Gorbachev's efforts to move the Soviet military towards a smaller, more
defensively oriented force structure.
2. Gorbachev's "new thinking" on security issues has had an impact on
Soviet military doctrine at the broad socio-political level, particularly
with respect to strategic nuclear issues. It has only set the scene,
however, for possible changes in operational doctrine for conventional
forces. It is the latter, of course, that consume 80-85% of the Soviet
defense budget and represent the most significant source for resource
reallocation.
3. Gorbachev's principal tool for changing Soviet military policy at the
operational level has been arms control policy. Gorbachev has used the
recent ferment over Soviet military doctrine to establish the doctrinal and
political rationalization for reducing and restructuring the huge Soviet
military establishment. Success in arms control, however, is necessary to
redefine the Western threat from which Soviet military requirements are
generated.
4. The INF Treaty and progress in START reflect an emerging consensus
among Soviet political and military leaders on the implications of nuclear
parity for Soviet security. Gorbachev and the Soviet military, however,
remain divided about "how much is enough" with respect to conventional
forces. Furthermore, the political risks to Gorbachev of imposing deep
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unilateral cuts in Soviet forces appear too high to permit any unilateral
moves that would either free up signficant resources for economic reform or
significantly reduce the military threat to NATO.
5. Gorbachev's recent statements suggest that he is anxious to engage
the United States and its NATO Allies in serious and far-reaching
negotiations on conventional arms control. The Defense Policy Panel plans
to examine the substance of these recent intiatives, as well as the Western
response, in hearings tentatively scheduled for September. It already
appears clear to the Panel, however, that both Gorbachev and the Soviet
military are far more prepared to engage on these issues than political and
military leaders in the United States. This runs two riRks for the United
States, either reaching a poor agreement or missing the opportunity to
conclude a good agreement. Either is unacceptable.
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