Future force planning

Abstract

on two hypotheses. According to the first, the Soviet Union has come to recognize that its offensive strategic doctrine is unrealistic and that the only safety for the Soviet Union lies in the reduction of the nuclear threat. According to the second, domestic pressures, and especially economic problems, force the Gorbachev leadership to seek a reduction in the USSR's defense burden. Unfortunately, there is no indication that the Soviet Union is prepared to abandon its offensive doctrine and its strategic and theater warfare stance in order to adopt a retaliatory-deterrence strategy and posture appropriate to it. The abandonment of the Soviet offensive war-fighting doctrine and posture would depend on the abandonment by the Soviet Union of its offensive foreign policy and, consequently, a fundamental change in Soviet ideology and approach to international relations. There is no indication that Gorbachev is prepared to attempt to navigate such a sea change. As to the Soviet economic problems, they are real enough; however, there is no sign of a Soviet slowdown in the further development of new nuclear strategic, conventional, and strategic defense capabilities. Soviet military spokesmen have made clear, both before and after the twenty-seventh Communist Party Congress, that the Gorbachev economic program is expected to greatly improve the Soviet industrial and technological base for the further strengthening of Soviet military capabilities and for waging the qualitative-technological military competition with the West. There is no reason to expect the Soviet Union to stop looking for ways to achieve a favorable "correlation of forces" vis-a-vis the West and, in light of experience, there is also no reason to expect that it will allow arms control negotiations and agreements to stand in the way of this search. []