Western Threat Perceptions and Soviet Military Doctrine

The end of the Cold War stimulated decisive positive changes in Russia-NATO relations. American military presence in Europe was reduced by 85% which was one of the signs of growing trust between Russia and the West. Moscow and Brussels adopted a number of documents (NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 among them) proclaiming mutual intention to develop a “stable and long-term partnership”. Unfortunately, a number of drawbacks in the Western strategy towards Russia (most notably NATO’s enlargement policy) almost derailed prospects to realize the above intention. Negative developments of the military political situation in Europe and in the world resulting from the Ukrainian crisis drastically aggravated the interaction between Russia and Western countries. As a result, Russia-NATO relations were thrown back on the brink of the Cold War and degraded from the level of developing cooperation with the goal of establishing partnership-like cooperation to a deep mistrust. For the first time since the Cold War, the militaries of the parties almost came in close contact creating the risk of military conflict. In this situation, reducing the level of mutual confrontation becomes an urgent task. To achieve this a number of measures may be undertaken: the mechanism of direct bilateral dialogue (primarily within the NATO-Russia Council) should be restarted, steps should be taken to prevent incidents on and over the high seas, certain key provisions of the Founding Act should be clarified and specified, the level and numbers of military maneuvers should be lowered significantly, zones of the reduced levels of armaments should be established, the process of negotiations on arms control and confidence building measures in Europe should be resumed. In fact, a number of such measures may be proposed. But it is important to take into consideration that the discussion on “modernization” of the 2011 Vienna Document on confidence- and security-building measures proposed by the West may be effectively started only in line with the development of a dialogue on security and arms control and achieving here sizable results. The parts should reduce drastically declaratory accusations addressing each other and try to refrain from activity that would be negatively perceived by the other side.

Space and Soviet military planning

Soviet military debates reveal the logic from which their military doctrine and strategy develop. That logic, based on the defense of Soviet territory and the acquisition of sufficient military power to deny military victory to any coalition of enemies, has not changed radically over time. The continuity in Soviet military doctrine and objectives should not, however, result in the failure to recognize the dynamic nature of Soviet military thought and military strategy. That dynamism in the European theater is the subject of this chapter which examines the evolution of deterrence-Soviet style. Its major thesis is that from Stalin to Gorbachev the political leadership has, through its military doctrine, tasked the armed forces to plan and develop military forces and strategies to deter nuclear war against Soviet territory. Military strategy has evolved with dramatic and often sudden shifts in response to American threats, Soviet capabilities, and changes in political leadership. This thesis is not new to Soviet specialists.1 The emphasis here is on Soviet potential for flexibility in war and how its evolution differs from NATO concepts of flexible response.

This book should command the attention of all Cold War historians. It is a book of prodigious research and immense erudition. Lorenz Lüthi has visited archives in the United States, England, Russia, China, Australia, India, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Austria, among other places. His aim is noteworthy: to “de-center” the Cold War. He argues that, for the most part, developments in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe had roots not in the global Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union but in “structural” changes in each of these regions that presaged the Cold War's end. He rejects the triumphalist narrative of some U.S. writers, minimizes the role of President Ronald Reagan, and claims that Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, did not want to end the Cold War and instead yearned to win that conflict. Overall, Lüthi stresses the agency of local actors and regional dynamics and claims that the capacity of Moscow and Washington to shape events was circumscribed by “decolonization, Asian-African Internationalism, pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, Arab-Israeli hostility, and European economic developments” (p. 1).Despite the ambition and learning that inform every page of this tome, the book is beset with interpretive ambiguities and conceptual problems. Lüthi argues that the Cold War was not predetermined but was the collective result of “ideological clashes, unilateral decisions, political disagreements, and misperceptions” (p. 13). Its origins rest in the desires of the USSR to “overthrow the imperialist-capitalist world system and the establishment of a stateless and classless society across the globe” (p. 3). In contrast to Odd Arne Westad's The Cold War: A World History (New York; Basic Books, 2017), Lüthi pays scant attention to the economic contradictions within global capitalism in the late nineteenth century, the cyclical fluctuations of business cycles in the early twentieth century, the rise of the Left, the yearnings for structural change within capitalism, and the disillusionment spawned by two world wars and the Great Depression. Rather, Lüthi's focus is on imperial aspirations and ideological conflict. He elides geostrategic motivations, the underlying dynamics of global capitalism, and the legacy of World War II. He does not explain that controlling German power in Europe and harnessing Japanese power in Asia were key components of the global Cold War as well as the regional Cold Wars in Europe and Asia. He does not show how the perceived structural dynamics of global capitalism impelled policymakers in North American, Europe, and Japan to focus on integrating the core industrial areas of global capitalism with markets and raw materials in the “periphery”; that is, in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa. He does not illustrate how socioeconomic unrest and political turmoil stemming from the Great Depression and World War II created perceptions of threat and opportunity in Moscow and Washington that set the conditions for the Cold War.The great attribute of this volume is Lüthi's detailed description of developments in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Cold War historians will be surprised by his decision to place developments in the Middle East at the forefront of the volume (chapter two), even while he argues that the Cold War did not come to the Middle East until the Suez crisis (chapters 8–10). The Middle East commands initial attention because Lüthi focuses on the legacy of British imperialism and the desires of officials in London to remake their empire in the aftermath of World War II with the help of the Arab League. In this context, Lüthi luminously describes inter-Arab dynamics, Arab-Israeli hostilities, and the rise of pan-Islamism. He stresses Anwar el-Sadat's desire to expel Soviet influence from Egypt, the complex dynamics spawned by the Palestinian quest for statehood, and the repercussions of the Iranian revolution. By the early 1980s, he writes, “the Cold War ceased to be the critical structure that shaped the regional system in the Middle East” (p. 518). But it is not clear what he means by the “regional system,” or whether the Cold War had ever shaped it. It is also not clear what constituted the regional Cold War in the Middle East when so many of the wars were hot, not cold. The role of oil in shaping the local, regional, and international dynamics of the different versions of Cold War in the region goes totally unexamined.Lüthi's discussion of Asia is central to the overall thesis of his book. “Three countries,” he writes, “played major roles in Asia's Cold War. China, Vietnam, and India all were dynamic agents in the shaping of their own fates and not just passive battlegrounds in the global competition between the United States and the Soviet Union” (p. 115). Lüthi shows how the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese rapprochement with the United States, the unification of revolutionary Vietnam, and “the collapse of communism as a unifying program for national liberation” (p. 537) reshaped the Asian Cold War during the 1970s. But here again it is not clear precisely what the Asian Cold War was, and why Japan is totally omitted from its discussion. Perhaps Lüthi would argue that Japan lacked agency, but even if that was the case the country was crucial to the trajectory of the Vietnam War and the U.S. role in it. Numerous historians—Howard Schonberger, Michael Schaller, Andrew Rotter, William Borden, and Robert Blum, among others—have shown in great detail how the goal of reconstructing and stabilizing Japan impelled U.S. officials to thwart Communist gains in Southeast Asia, create an independent South Vietnam, establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and support the rightwing military coup, crackdown, and massacres in Indonesia. While ignoring these dimensions of the Asian Cold War, Lüthi presents fascinating chapters on China, Vietnam, and India, on Asian-African internationalism, and on nonalignment. He shows that the Asian Cold War had many manifestations and permutations. At different times, in different ways, these trajectories affected the U.S.-Soviet global conflict and were influenced by that conflict. But Lüthi also acknowledges that “the end of the global Cold War primarily required a strategic rethinking in Moscow which would only come in March 1985 with Mikhail S. Gorbachev's ascent to power” (p. 537).Strategic rethinking was necessitated by developments in Europe. Lüthi incisively describes the successful integrationist initiatives in Western Europe and the concomitant failures in the Soviet-imposed Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. He emphasizes the ability of Western economies to recalibrate, innovate, and adjust to changing economic and monetary conditions, and he highlights the failures of centrally managed systems to do so. He minimizes the role of the United States in the reconstruction of Western Europe, mentioning that it “provided a stable and supportive framework” (p. 380). Ultimately, the failure of Communist economies to compete and modernize contributed to the flagging popular support for Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War. But Lüthi does not make much of an effort to analyze the basic shortcomings in Communist systems, nor does he examine why and how liberal capitalist and social-democratic market economies were able to adapt successfully. For example, he describes the impact of declining oil prices in the 1980s and the constraints that imposed on Moscow's ability to subsidize the economies of its East European satellites, but he rarely makes an attempt to analyze the dysfunctionality of Soviet agricultural policies or the flawed operations of central planning. He stresses the resilience of West European economies but barely mentions the creation of social welfare states and the role of governments in providing minimal social provision and expanding educational opportunity, access to medical care, and support for basic research.This volume is a monumental attempt to de-center the Cold War and restore agency to middle-level powers and local actors. What it does is de-center international politics. It illuminates that much was going on in the latter half of the twentieth century that was not the product of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War but at times intersected with it and contributed to its denouement. Small powers had their own agendas, and regional dynamics had their own logic. In complicated ways, developments in one region influenced those in another. Thanks to the prodigious research of an author with staggering linguistic skills and breathtaking knowledge of multiple literatures, one comes away much better informed about the complexities of international politics but not equally enlightened about the Cold War itself.

Perspectives on <i>The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War</i>

Soviet Military Doctrine

In the Soviet Union military doctrine is the military policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In theory, Soviet military doctrine is formulated by the Central Committee. Soviet spokesmen seek to convince the West that their military doctrine consists of a “purely defensive character,” even claiming that this always was the case. Many in the West hope that current statements by Soviet leaders about their forces being maintained at a level of “reasonable sufficiency” mean a change in Soviet thinking. Soviet spokesmen are very vague on the meaning of “reasonable sufficiency.” Soviet spokesmen press the matter of “reasonable sufficiency” in television programs and radio broadcasts. Since the mid-1950’s the idea of internal Soviet military “doctrinal” debates dominated United States’ perceptions of Soviet military writings. The training of the Soviet leadership, whether they be industrial managers, Party apparatchiki, or military officers, is political and conceptual.

Part 1 Nato, nuclear weapons and conventional defence: flexible response problems with nuclear reliance raising with the nuclear threshold minimum deterrence common security conclusion. Part 2 NATO'S central front: the political context the geography of the central front NATO - organization and deployment the WTO - organization and deployment conclusion. Part 3 the military balance: bean counting measuring force effectiveness analysing combat dynamics conclusion. Part 4 Soviet military doctrine: the great patriotic war Stalin and the nuclear age the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' developing a conventional variant the Orgarkov Revolution Gorbachev and 'New Thinking' conclusion. Part 5 NATO operational doctrine: airland battle and US Army doctrine defending Nothern Germany - the British-NORTHAG concept of operations follow-on forces attack (FOFA) conclusion. Part 6 non-offensive defence: the development of non-offensive defence the Spider and the Web - the SAS model characteristics of non-offensive defence criticisms of non-offensive defence.

On Soviet military doctrine

The environment is very important in the aspects of peace because when we destroy our resources and our resources become scarce, we fight over that.I am working to make sure we don't only protect the environment, we also improve governance.

Contemporary international relations witness an ever-increasing tension between the United States and China. In an attempt to capture and conceptualize this trend, a new term was introduced in the IR academic discourse — a ‘Cold War 2.0’ (or new Cold War). Ambiguous and vague as it is, it may nevertheless be instrumental for the study of certain aspects of contemporary world politics. In particular, it allows one to consider the developments of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue (KPNI) within the broader framework of emerging US-China confrontation. The first section examines current debates over the ‘Cold War 2.0’ concept both in Russian and foreign academic literature, and identifies its country-specific interpretations in the United States, Russia and the PRC. The second section shows that, despite its contested and controversial nature, the ‘Cold War 2.0’ concept provides useful insights on how concrete steps of global and regional actors aimed at enhancing their military capabilities are threatening to turn the Korean Peninsula into the arena of a new bipolar confrontation. In the third section, drawing on the Harvard negotiation model and the experience of 2005 Agreement, the author attempts to identify the zone of potential agreement on the KPNI under new conditions. The author concludes that both the leading powers and the countries of the Korean Peninsula utilize the ‘Cold War 2.0’ rhetoric to get additional domestic and foreign policy dividends. Thus, the DPRK relies upon the nuclear factor, while the Republic of Korea tries to balance between the great powers and to gain more weight in the international arena by building on the ‘medium power’ concept. In the long term, such policies are fraught with uncontrolled escalation that could lead to a new full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula.

Since the end of the Cold war, many tensions in the international society appear to be eased. In order to sustain it’s economic development, China have to keep stable relationship with international community and such intention also affects China’s positions and practices on confidence building measures (CBMs). Besides, to ease the concerns of other countries about “China threat”, China has been enthusiastically concluding many CBMs agreements with other countries and group of countries by advocating new security concept and cooperative patterns. However, the measures which China took still think inside the box of national strategies. The features of China’s CBMs can be summarized as follow: 1) setting up political statement, 2) enhancing informal patterns, 3) developing bilateral and multilateral relationship simultaneously, 4) advancing step by step. To maintain its best interests, China’s CBMs establishment with Russia, central Asia countries, India, USA and Japan is based on four dimensions: 1. military strategy: to ease the concerns of other countries about China threat. 2. economic strategy: to protect primary economic interests, and to create a suitable economic development environment. 3. security strategy: to constrain the rise of separationism. 4. energy strategy: to assure the security of supply line and supply. With the rapidly rising of China’s national power, the strengths of economy and military power have gradually tilted to in favor of China. It’s important to put efforts on how to establish CBMs between both sides under the prerequisite of security across the Taiwan Strait. However, there still exist differences on the issues of definition of “one China,” perception of sovereignty, and perception of threat between Taiwan and the Mainland. Close cross-strait contacts on all aspects over the years have produced structural changes in cross-strait relations, and this has given opportunities for both sides to achieve peace. Based on the research findings, I suggest that, how to establish CBMs between both sides through “enhancing political will”, “indentifying responsible institution”, “establishing research units and databases”, “adopting defense strategies” and “obtaining support from the US” by the Taiwan government should be the priority in the current stage. In the meanwhile, the planning of establishing thinking tank and the effects caused by military imbalance of cross-strait should be put into evaluation by the Ministry of National Defense of Taiwan.

In the winter of 1986, Thomas Schelling, the intellectual father of modem arms control, lamented that ‘arms control has certainly gone off the tracks’. ‘For several years’, he continued, ‘what are called arms negotiations have been mostly a public exchange of accusations; and it often looks as if it is the arms negotiations that are driving the arms race.’1 When Schelling wrote these words there was certainly a good deal to be sceptical about. Not a single significant arms control accord had entered into force between the United States and the Soviet Union since the ratification of the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) I agreements signed in May 1972. Subsequent agreements reached between President Richard Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev to implement a threshold test ban on nuclear weapons and to restrict peaceful nuclear explosions were never ratified by the US Senate. The superpowers had reached agreement on a statement concerning the prevention of nuclear war and had modified the protocol to the Anti-ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. And they both continued to adhere to most of the provisions of the SALT II Treaty that was signed in 1979, although it too was never ratified by the Senate. But by the winter of 1986 the prospects for future negotiated agreements seemed slim indeed. Both the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and the INF negotiations appeared completely deadlocked, acrimony dominated the Soviet— American dialogue, and the superpower arms competition was as intense as it had ever been in the four decades of the Cold War.

David Reynolds, ed., The Origins of the Cold War in Europe: International Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994) Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter, eds, Origins of the Cold War: An International History (London: Routledge, 1994) Norbert Wiggershaus and Roland G. Foerster, eds, The Western Security Commu nity: Common Problems and Conflicting National Interests during the Foundation Phase of the North Atlantic Alliance (Oxford: Berg, 1993) Patrick Glynn, Closing Pandora's Box: Arms Races, Arms Control and the History of the Cold War (New York: Basic Books, 1992)

Reviewed by: Pathogens for War: Biological Weapons, Canadian Life Scientists, and North America Biodefence by Donald Avery John Ellis van Courtland Moon Donald Avery. Pathogens for War: Biological Weapons, Canadian Life Scientists, and North America Biodefence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. xii + 410 pp. Ill. $36.95 (978-1-4426-1424-6). Professor Donald Avery has written the most definitive available history of the Canadian biological warfare (BW) program. The scope of Pathogens for War is to analyze “the impact of bioweapons, bioterrorism, and pandemics within the historical context” (p. 3). Avery places the Canadian BW narrative with several broader contexts: (1) national politics where the Canadian government pursued a secret BW research and development program in the face of mounting public antipathy; (2) North Atlantic security, which bound Canada into combined biological planning with the United States and the United Kingdom; and (3) the role of BW within a world dominated by nuclear weapons. Although the United States was the dominant partner in the above Tripartite alliance, Avery details the important contributions Canada made to their combined BW program: a major testing ground, the Suffield Experimental Station, the joint U.S. Canadian rinderpest station on Grosse Isle, the Kingston Laboratory that researched shellfish poisons and insect vectors. Of special importance to the joint BW effort were the outstanding Canadian scientists who gained the respect of their American colleagues. [End Page 395] Pathogens for War is divided into two sections: part 1 deals with biological weapons programs during the Second World War and the Cold War, part 2 with the changes in BW policy and preparedness following President Nixon’s 1969 renunciation of the offensive program. Part 1 is dominated by the BW threat from state powers, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Soviet Russia; part 2 by the bioterrorism threat accompanied by increasing concern over pandemics and anxiety over BW proliferation. In part 1 the major threat comes from traditional biological agents, in part 2 from genetically engineered agents. During both phases, the threat of BW sabotage remained a matter of high concern. Biological weapons, with their ability to penetrate into buildings, were seen as highly effective when used against urban centers. One attack model predicted that if Toronto were deluged with anthrax, the attack would result in casualties of “‘at least 20% of the exposed population’” (p. 163). The difficulties of preparing against a biological attack were complicated by several factors. First, since initial BW research and development takes place in laboratories and can be masked as genuine medical research, it is excruciatingly difficult to obtain intelligence on BW activities. Second, a deliberate BW attack could be difficult to distinguish from a natural disease outbreak. Third, in case of a biological attack, it was highly unlikely that the defender could detect the incoming attack or identify the agent in real time. The limitations of BW intelligence created a planning dilemma. Since security officials were uncertain of the BW capabilities of their potential enemies, they planned for the worst. The BW attack scenarios depicted catastrophic events. Given the scarcity of historical record, the BW scenarios largely reflected the horrendous effects produced by the plagues of the past. As the recent SARS and bird flu epidemics have reminded us, nature has proven to be a greater killer than man. As Avery points out, biological weapons research has created its own dilemmas. Professional scientists prefer open research, which many arms controllers also favor as building confidence that a potential enemy is not cheating on the Biological Warfare Convention (1972), which prohibits the production, stockpiling, maintenance, or transfer of biological agents and toxins. But open ended research, especially given the work on recombinant DNA, poses the threat of proliferating the capabilities of rogue nations. How well prepared were the major national states to wage BW during the Cold War? Avery judges that by 1969, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada had transformed BW into a viable military option. They could create agents, establish production facilities, and produce the weapons necessary for the delivery of biological attacks. Moreover, the large area coverage dissemination concept was demonstrated by the trials held under Project 112. A caveat is necessary: Avery claims that two...