TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/83/83capmoy.5

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                                                                                January 2, 1984

MEN OF THE YEAR

Debate over a Doctrine


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 questions 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 relative little to support such a judgment. The
evidence most often cited is an article by Marshall Nikolai
Ogarkov, chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces, in the 1980
eduction 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."

en 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 attach 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 writing s 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 that 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 nay
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 50
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