Soviet Defence Spending Research Articles

Soviet Defense Spending

Soviet Defense Spending

CIA Estimates of Soviet Defense Spending: A Review

(1998). CIA Estimates of Soviet Defense Spending: A Review. Post-Soviet Geography and Economics: Vol. 39, No. 9, pp. 549-553.

Red Forge: Soviet Military Industry since 1965. By Peter Almquist. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. 227p. $35.00. - The Political Economy of Soviet Military Power. By Leo Cooper. New York: St. Martin's, 1989. 263p. $49.95. - The Soviet High Command, 1967–1989: Personalities and Politics. By Dale R. Herspring. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 322p. $39.50 cloth, $14.50 paper. -

Red Forge: Soviet Military Industry since 1965. By Peter Almquist. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. 227p. $35.00. - The Political Economy of Soviet Military Power. By Leo Cooper. New York: St. Martin's, 1989. 263p. $49.95. - The Soviet High Command, 1967–1989: Personalities and Politics. By Dale R. Herspring. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 322p. $39.50 cloth, $14.50 paper. -

Soviet defence spending: The contribution of the new accountancy

Soviet defence spending: The contribution of the new accountancy

Soviet defense spending: The Spartan analogy

Abstract This essay was prompted by the comparison between the Soviet Union and ancient Sparta recently made by economists and Sovietologists. Amid growing dissatisfaction with recent efforts to model the Soviet economy and its defense sector, Sparta is invoked as a model of a state in which politics takes precedence over economics, in a manner not dissimilar to the way in which Leninism prescribes that all a state's activity, including economics, be politicized. Sparta's structure sought, above all, to insulate the defense sector from the fate of the domestic economy. The aim of the paper is not so much to support or criticize the analogy as to provide the means for evaluating it. Aciordingly, it marshals and explicates both the ancient evidence and modern scholarship on those issues that any student of the contemporary Soviet economy must understand if he or she wishes to judge how far ancient Spartan society sheds light on the way communist Russia does business today. It may also prove useful in helpin...

U.S. Defense Spending and the Soviet Estimate

There is a glaring and potentially important discontinuity surrounding discussions of U.S. defense expenditure policy making. On the one hand, a growing body of empirically-based research questions whether the U.S. reacts in any significant fashion to the military expenditures of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, defense policy makers routinely justify defense increases as a response to similar increases by the Soviet Union. The discontinuity is resolved in the context of a multistep model of the defense expenditure policy-making process that incorporates a new estimate of Soviet defense spending and mass public opinion. Once formulated, the model provides answers to the following two questions: (1) Does the U.S., insofar as defense spending is concerned, react to the military expenditures of the Soviet Union? (2) If so, what is the magnitude of the reaction? The answers indicate that not only does the U.S. react to estimated Soviet defense spending, but that the reaction is directly responsible for a very substantial portion of the post-1978 increases in U.S. military expenditures.

Science and Technology Studies and the Question of the Military

In the first half of the 1980s the United States has spent a trillion dollars on defence. Astrophysicists may have an intuitive sense of the meaning of 1012. I can grasp the figure only by translating it into human terms. It works out at $1,000 (around ?700 at current exchange rates) for each of the poorest billion people on earth surely enough, if wisely spent, to banish famine and endemic disease. Since 1980, the US defence budget has risen by 51 percent in real terms (taking inflation into account), the research and development budget by 56 percent and the procurement budget by 91 percent. One single defence project, President Reagan's 'Star Wars' Strategic Defense Initiative, will, if pursued, cost of the order of a trillion dollars on its own. While it is questionable whether Soviet defence spending exceeds that of the United States, it certainly forms a larger part of a considerably smaller economy. And, lest the reader feel these words are written with smug West European superiority, it is worth noting that over half British government research and development funding is devoted to defence, a proportion which certainly far exceeds those in other Western European nations. It is indeed probable that the proportion of research and development devoted to defence in the UK is the highest of any major nation apart from the Soviet Union. 1 What does all this money buy? Patently not security. The flexing of military muscle against much weaker foes has, it is true, recently reinvigorated some atavistic feelings in television audiences in Britain and the United States. One commentator writes of the age of the Falklands/Malvinas war and the invasion of Grenada as 'spectator-sport militarism' :2 great lengths are now gone to in order to avoid disturbing the warm patriotic glow by allowing gory human consequences to be seen as they were in Vietnam days. But this aside, it is hardly necessary to

Causes of the slowdown in Soviet defense

This paper discusses the recent official U.S. intelligence estimates indicating a slowdown in the growth rates of Soviet defense spending and military procurement since 1976. The Central Intelligence Agency's explanation for the slowdown is examined. Questions are raised about two of the factors, economic constraints and technical difficulties, and the implications of the CIA's explanation for theories about the relationship of the defense sector to the rest of the economy are considered. The author offers as a possible alternative explanation of the slowdown a change in Soviet military investment priorities de-emphasizing strategic offensive weapons. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 052, 114, 124.

Fluctuations in Soviet Defense Spending

Despite our efforts to understand the dynamics of the arms race, we know little about the causes of short-term fluctuations in USSR military spending. This article attempts to shed new light on the domestic causes of these fluctuations, with special emphasis on Soviet economic conditions. It is found that annual shifts in military budgets are responsive to the magnitude of the economic burden that defense outlays represent in a given year and to the stage of the five-year planning cycle the Soviet economy happens to be in. With respect to the latter, the military sector fares least well relative to the civilian sector at the beginning and end of the five-year period, but compensates for this toward the middle of the cycle.

The Soviet Calculus of Nuclear War

This book presents papers on nuclear weapons policy in the USSR. Topics considered include contemporary Soviet military policy, Soviet strategic planning, ballistic missile defense, Soviet arms control decision making since Brezhnev, Soviet positions on strategic arms control, negotiating with the Soviets, the slowdown of Soviet defense spending, weapons acquisition in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union and the East European militaries.

Economic Constraints on Soviet Policies in the 1980s

So far as Soviet economic prospects are concerned, there are at present two schools of thought among Western analysts. The pessimists contend that the prospects for the Soviet economy in the present decade are bad; the optimists contend that they are very bad. It is the pessimistic view that is developed here. The article has three main aims. First, to put the dimensions of the Soviet growth slowdown in perspective. Secondly, to review the options in economic policy that are open to the Soviet leadership in the near future. Thirdly, to consider the implications of slow Soviet economic growth in the 1980s for other areas of Soviet policy-notably defence. The argument is developed in five main sections. These deal in turn with the pattern of Soviet economic growth from 1950 to 1980 and some projections for the 1980s; the reasons for the slowdown; an assessment of the Soviet leadership's likely 'minimum requirements' for Soviet economic performance in the 1980s; options in the policy-makers' management of the economy, and a consideration of the implications of slow economic growth for the Soviet stance towards the outside world and for Soviet defence spending.

Analysing Soviet defence spending: The debate in perspective

Analysing Soviet defence spending: The debate in perspective

Estimating Soviet defence spending

Estimating Soviet defence spending

Soviet defence spending

Soviet defence spending

Soviet Defence Spending and Soviet External Relations*

Soviet Defence Spending and Soviet External Relations*