Nudging the Soviets Toward ‘Defense’ That Looks Defensive

Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci recently returned from a trip to the Soviet Union as the guest of Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov. Soviet Chief of Staff Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev in July paid a six-day visit to the United States, where he was shown the American B-1 bomber and taken aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. Top U.S. and Soviet military officers held meetings during the Moscow and Washington summits. Contacts have also proliferated at lower levels of both sides’ military Establishments.

Something is going on here. But whether this proliferation of talks has changed only the form or also the substance of the superpower relationship is not clear. Discussions, while useful for airing grievances and gaining insights, cannot alter the basic conflicts of interest that promote and partly derive from the military power wielded by Moscow and Washington.

There is no persuasive evidence that Mikhail S. Gorbachev has reduced the overall Soviet military effort. The threat that the Soviet military buildup in the 1960s and 1970s posed to U.S. interests has not diminished. This is the litmus test of Gorbachev’s “new thinking” in foreign and security policies. This is why the Carlucci discussions with Yazov, and Akhromeyev’s discussions with Adm. William J. Crowe, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are so important.

A central issue in these talks has been the Soviet and Warsaw Pact claim to have adopted a “defensive doctrine.” While pact officials have always claimed that their military posture is defensive, the forces have always looked highly offensive to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Soviet military doctrine has also stressed highly offensive concepts--like preemption, massive firepower and rapid advance--applied to both nuclear- and conventional-war scenarios. This is the military reality forming the foundation on which the Warsaw Pact claimed to adopt a “new look” defensive military doctrine at its June, 1986, Budapest and May, 1987, Berlin meetings.

This claim was the reason for Carlucci’s efforts to define what the United States would regard as evidence of real change toward a more defensive Soviet doctrine. He saidof his March talks with Yazov, “I came away convinced that, while there remains a wide gap between reality and rhetoric, Soviet officials are at least talking intently about such a change.” That was also the reason for his speech to the Voroshilov Military Academy, the most prestigious in the Soviet Union, during his last visit. There he told a high-ranking military audience that the deployment of Soviet forces contradicted the claim that the Soviets had shifted to a defensive doctrine. He indicated that the United States would “wait and watch,” but would welcome “constructive change when we see it manifested in concrete terms.”

Carlucci’s position is the only one that a prudent military planner could take. He is to be admired for holding the feet of Soviet generals and admirals to the fire of matching their words with deeds in this matter of “defensive doctrine,” and for being open and positive to the possibility of change.

His constructive approach is merited by what is happening in Soviet military affairs. First, there are the exchanges themselves. Second, the withdrawal from Afghanistan has undoubtedly had a profound effect on the Soviet military. Third, Gorbachev used the flight of West German Mattias Rust into Red Square last year to impose additional party discipline on the military, and the release of the young German during Carlucci’s visit only underlined this authority.

But, more important, public discussion of Soviet security has broadened during the past year, and something like a genuine debate has emerged in Moscow. The most far-reaching positions have been taken by civilians, and their participation in the debate on technical military matters is also new for the Soviet Union.

The most extensive discussion has come in two articles by Dr. Andrei Kokoshin, a member of the Academy of Sciences and a senior analyst at the Institute of the USA and Canada, and Maj. Gen. V. V. Larionov, a member of the Soviet general staff and a long-time contributor to Soviet military doctrine. In August, 1987, they attacked the belief of military officers that “only a decisive offensive leads to victory,” and developed a careful historical analysis of the battle of Kursk in World War II to argue for a defensive strategy. This June they published another article, laying out four scenarios for Soviet doctrine, and they have endorsed the most radical of these options: “Option Four pre-supposes that each side chooses, on an agreed basis of mutual example, a purely defensive option on a strategic and operational scale, without the material potential for conducting offensive or counteroffensive operations.”

Other Soviet civilians have participated in the debate, and have advanced some quite radical ideas--like calling for unilateral reductions of Soviet forces. In contrast, the military leadership has reacted to the challenge of civilian strategists with a mixture of caution and violent rebuttal. All military officers, of course, describe Soviet doctrine as defensive. That is the policy of the political leadership and the Warsaw Pact. But they have tried to define the concept in traditional ways, arguing that Soviet doctrine is by nature defensive and that if the Soviet Union is attacked, its armed forces will deliver “crushing blows”--including by “vigorous counteroffensive.” Those are the doctrinal ideas that have led to the deployment of forces considered so threatening to NATO. They are precisely what the civilians have questioned.

Such a discussion of basic national-security issues constitutes a powerful change in the ways in which things are done in Moscow. Gorbachev’s “new thinking” is challenging the most basic pillar of Leonid I. Brezhnev’s rule--the inviolability of at least some Soviet military traditions.