Debate over a Doctrine

By Otto Friedrich

Soviet nuclear strategy has aroused U.S. suspicions

At the heart of the Soviet-American confrontation lies one momentous riddle: Are the Soviets willing to start a nuclear war, and do they think they could win it?

The public and official Soviet answer to that question is a resounding no. Leonid Brezhnev declared several times that a nuclear war would be "unwinnable" and "madness." Just five months before his death in 1982, he sent a formal message to the United Nations declaring that the Kremlin "assumes an obligation not to be the first to use nuclear weapons." Brezhnev challenged everyone else to make a similar pledge, a challenge that the U.S. promptly declined. (According to U.S. nuclear doctrine, it is only the longstanding American threat to use nuclear weapons against a Soviet invasion of Western Europe that deters Moscow from any such attack.)

The official Soviet posture has not changed since Yuri Andropov came to power. A few weeks after he was named to succeed Brezhnev, the Soviet party chief declared, "A nuclear war, whether big or small, whether limited or total, must not be allowed to break out."

But apart from what top Kremlin officials may say in public, the question remains: What are the Soviets really thinking? Though no definitive answer is possible, some U.S. experts believe that key Soviet military strategists consider a nuclear war "winnable." "What is most disturbing about what we observe from the Soviet command . . . system," Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle testified before a House committee, "is that it looks to us like one that proceeds from the belief that nuclear war could be fought and won."

One troubling implication in that idea is that if a nuclear war could be won, it would probably be won by the nation that struck first, by surprise. No top U.S. official would say that Moscow might be designing its strategy based on such a preemptive strike, but some think-tank strategists are less reticent. Says Raymond Garthoff of the Brookings Institution: "If war came, they would probably launch an all-out attack on the U.S. They might go first, with everything."

There is relatively little to support such a judgment. The evidence most often cited is an article by Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces, in the 1980 edition of the Soviet Military Encyclopedia. "If a nuclear war is foisted upon the Soviet Union," wrote Ogarkov, the Soviets "will have definite advantages stemming from the just goals of the war and the advanced nature of their social and state system." This, he concluded, "creates objective possibilities for them to achieve victory."

When some conservative Western Kremlinologists began to interpret that bit of ideological breast beating as a strategy for nuclear victory, the Moscow press took pains to discredit such a view. Western experts, however, have found other, less ambiguous Soviet predictions of nuclear victory. For example, the 1972 edition of the book Marxism-Leninism on War and Army, written by a collective of authors, declared, "Today's weapons make it possible to achieve strategic objectives very quickly. The very first nuclear attack on the enemy may inflict such immense casualties and produce such vast destruction that his economic, moral-political and military capabilities will collapse."

Just how authoritative such writings are remains debatable, but the fact that this book appeared in the early 1970s indicates that it had no immediate effect on Soviet strategy. Indeed, there is evidence that Soviet assessments of nuclear war have become more cautious in recent years. Says Adam Ulam, director of Harvard's Russian Research Center: "When the Soviets' nuclear power was puny, in the mid-'50s, they were boasting and bluffing that war would mean the end of capitalism, and socialism would emerge triumphant. Since then, on several occasions, the Soviets have conceded that the results of nuclear war are incalculable and most likely cataclysmic."

More important, perhaps, is the fact that the Soviets, like the U.S., repeatedly carry out military exercises that are planned as part of a nuclear war. These include the simulated launching of nuclear missiles. Despite the widespread idea that any nuclear war would be over in a day or two, the Soviet maneuvers assume a prolonged conflict. In the fall of 1980, for example, they spent several days practicing the reloading of 25 to 40 silos housing giant intercontinental SS-18 missiles. But such maneuvers might have been primarily designed to show the U.S. that the Soviets believe they could survive and retaliate against a U.S. nuclear attack.

One of the basic reasons for Western suspicion of Soviet strategy is that Western analysts tend to interpret even defensive preparations for war as signs of a willingness to wage war. The Soviets disagree. They suffered a surprise attack by the Germans in 1941, and Marxist ideology tells them they will be attacked again. To make whatever preparations can be made seems only sensible. More than a few U.S. experts believe the West should adopt similar policies.

Strategists who suspect the Soviets of thinking that a nuclear war is winnable have become more influential under the Reagan Administration, but there are still many who disagree. Says Gregory Flynn, deputy director of the Paris-based Atlantic Institute: "The most important thing that we always overlook is that everything the Soviets have ever said or written has as its starting point that we started the war. The preponderance of evidence is that the Soviets just do not want to fight a war.''

--By Otto Friedrich. Reported by John Moody/Moscow and Bruce W. Nelan/Washington

With reporting by John Moody/Moscow, Bruce W. Nelan/Washington