Soviet Perspectives on European Security

Abstract

Of all the countries concerned with security in Europe, few have such a complex problem as the Soviet Union. Like the other powers, the Soviet Union must try to answer the unanswerable questions about whether and how nuclear weapons might be used in the European sphere. Like the other powers, it must wonder what would happen in a purely conventional war, for the effectiveness of Warsaw pact allies, Western antitank weapons, and even the Soviet and Western armies themselves is very difficult to assess beforehand. As well, the Soviet Union must be concerned about security in ways that few nations in Europe share. It must worry about the security of the internal regimes of its East European allies, and it must worry that political and economic innovations which have appeared in those countries (for example, Solidarity, Dubcek-like measures, or specific economic reforms) will spread in an unwanted manner to the Soviet Union. Moreover, Soviet conservatives see Europe and the West in general as the source of ideas that threaten to subvert the only form of the Soviet socialist system that they think legitimate. Soviet liberals, like the Wester nizers from whom they descend, see those European ideas as a possible guarantee of their individual freedom against a repressive regime that they would like to see moderated.