The grand strategy of the Soviet Union

254 Pages·1983·8.463 MB·English

by  Edward N. Luttwak

ISBN 0-31B-3MeS6-b >$m.35
THE
CBAND STRITEOT
OF THE
SOVIET UHIOH
Is the U.S.S.R. peaceful or belligerent?
What is the nature of its imperialist policies?
What is the extent of Soviet military power?
In short, why is the Soviet Union strangling
its own economy to subsidize a huge military
buildup when its forces are already the most
powerful in the world? In The Grand Strategy
of the Soviet Union, Edward N. Luttwak
addresses with thought-provoking argument
these and other crucial questions facing
defense experts and world leaders.
Luttwak interprets Soviet policy as the
result of successive ideological, political and
economic failures, and argues that today’s
Soviet Union is no longer Lenin’s creation,
but rather a great military empire in the clas¬
sic tradition. The Russians are again an impe¬
rialist people, and the professionals of
expansion—the soldiers and policemen—
have displaced the ideologists, planners and
Party bureaucrats in the Kremlin. Luttwak
predicts that as the Soviets continue to con¬
vert their economic resources into military
strength, the West will be faced with a Soviet
Union driven towards further expansionism,
and he provides an incisive analysis of the
possible consequences, one that every Ameri¬
can concerned with the balance of power will
find convincing. Lucid, perceptive and
thoughtful. The Grand Strategy of the Soviet
Union is a book few responsible citizens can
afford to ignore.
Edward N. Luttwak
The Grand Strategy
of the Soviet Union
With appendices by
Herbert Block and W. Seth Cams
St. Martin's Press
New York
THE GRAND STRATEGY OF THE SOVIET UNION, Copyright ©
1983 by Edward N. Luttwak. All rights reserved. Printed
in the United States of America. No part of this book
may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For
information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth
Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 83-60410
ISBN 0-312-34258-6
First published in Great Britain by George Weidenfeld
and Nicolson Limited.
7
/ ■
Contents
List of Tables ix
Preface xi
1 Introduction: What is the Soviet Union? i
The question of nationality 4
2 The Traditional Pattern of Soviet Strategy 13
3 The New Dynamics of the Soviet Empire:
from Optimism to Pessimism 21
Imperialism: the last stage of Soviet optimism 25
The advent of pessimism 28
Military optimism and its consequences 39
4 The Tools of Soviet Power 42
The advent of operational confidence 55
The decline of Soviet ideological influence 60
5 Soviet Imperialism and its Consequences 72
The mechanics of expansion 75
6 The Future Scope of Soviet Imperial Expansion 81
Expansion for political security 86
Expansion for strategic security 89
Expansion for regional security 107
7 In Conclusion: Soviet Grand Strategy and its Future in
Notes 117
V
Contents
Appendix I: The Economic Basis of Soviet Power
by Herbert Block
Part One: the Present 119
Part Two: the Outlook for a Decade or Two 145
Notes 174
Appendix II: The Evolution of Soviet Military Power
Since 1965 by W. Seth Car us
Strategic- and Theatre-nuclear Forces 176
Army 191
Air force 206
Navy 214
References 231
Index 235
VI
To David M. Abshire, in
small recompense for ten
years of patient friendship.
List of Tables
1 Distribution of Soviet field divisions; current and 84
contingent
2 Average annual gnp growth rates (USSR, US, world) 137
3 Estimated Soviet gnp at factor cost, 1950-80, by sector 169
of origin and by end use
4 GNP for important countries and groupings, 1950-80; 170
population and per capita gnp 1980
5 Estimated rates of growth of Soviet gnp and its 171
subdivisions, 1950-80, with an international
comparison
6 Total population, working-age population and labour 172
force in the USSR
7 Soviet foreign trade and its geographic distribution, 173
1955-80
8 Strategic nuclear weapons delivery systems 183
9 Theatre and strategic bombers 184
10 Ballistic missile submarines 185
11 Strategic ballistic missiles 186
12 Strategic defence forces 187
13 Air defence aircraft 188
14 Theatre-nuclear weapons delivery systems 189
15 Theatre ballistic missiles 190
16 Army divisions, by type and region 196
17 Divisional strength 197
18 Army weapons and equipment 198
19 Tanks 198
20 Light armoured vehicles 199
21 Artillery 200
22 Multiple rocket launchers 201
23 Mortars 201
24 Anti-tank guns 202
25 Anti-tank guided missiles 203
26 Land-based surface-to-air missiles 204
27 Anti-aircraft guns 205
28 Airforce 211
29 Tactical combat aircraft 211
ix
List of Tables
30 Air-to-surface missiles 212
31 Air-to-air missiles 213
32 Transport aircraft 213
33 Naval vessels 221
34 Cruise missile submarines 222
35 Torpedo attack submarines 223
36 Aircraft carriers and aviation cruisers 223
37 Cruisers 224
38 Destroyers 225
39 Frigates 226
40 Small combatants 227
41 Ship-borne anti-ship missiles 228
42 Ship-borne surface-to-air missiles 229
43 Naval aviation 229
44 Naval aircraft 230
Tables 8-44 refer to Soviet forces
X
Preface
The worst fears and the best of hopes conspire to distort our
understanding of the Soviet Union and its strategy. Certainly our
welfare and possibly our survival may depend on our ability to make
a true judgement of the Soviet Union; but as we strive to assay its
power, as we seek to uncover the intent of its leaders, our view is
obscured by the clash of rival opinions, each very categorical and
none wholly persuasive.
Some persist in believing that the Soviet Union is essentially
peaceful, or at least that its aims are strictly defensive. They evoke
the record of Russian history to show that the Tsars conquered the
largest empire ever made on earth not by aggression, but merely by
holding their winnings each time they successfully resisted invasion.
The leaders of the Soviet Union, they argue, conform to this
pattern, so that while some modest effort to maintain Western
strength may be justified, the current preponderance of Soviet
military power over any feasible Western coalition should be
accepted with equanimity. The Soviet Union, they assert, is no
more inclined to start wars than the Tsars were, and indeed much
less, given the nuclear sanction of our age.
In a more technical vein, some of those who belong to this school
of thought argue that the military power of the Soviet Union is
greatly overestimated; they insist that with an industry so backward
its weapons cannot possibly be advanced; that as an empire of many
nations its armed forces cannot have sufficient cohesion to risk a
major war. Images of the clumsy Russian linger in their view to
sustain a particular opinion about the nature of Soviet military
power: very strong no doubt on the defensive, but fundamentally
incapable of launching powerful offensives of swift and precise
execution, to circumvent nuclear deterrence by a quick victory.
Until the spectacular seizure of Kabul in December 1979 by
airborne assault, this view had much to support it, including the
Soviet performance in Czechoslovakia in 1968, when a great and
disordered mass of forces flooded into that country only to suffer
logistic breakdowns which would have made them quite vulnerable
had the Czechs resisted.
XI
Preface
Certainly the optimistic view of a Soviet Union fundamentally
unaggressive and the adjunct opinion that discounts its military
power suggest that our safety is easily assured, and with only the
smallest sacrifice for the upkeep of Western defences. Only one
thing spoils the happy prospect: our great difficulty in believing that
it is really all so easy. And our doubts must be greatly stimulated by
a peculiar contradiction: it is precisely those who belong to this
school of thought who are most insistent in pressing for policies of
accommodation towards the Soviet Union. If there is so little to
fear, why strive so urgently to assuage Soviet hostility?
At the opposite extreme, there is the opinion that the Soviet
Union is simply the Nazi Germany of our days, and just as
aggressive - not this time because of a maniacal leading spirit but
rather because a military empire is expansionist by its very nature.
This is a Soviet Union that is bent on war, being now delayed only
by some unfulfilled programme of military preparation. There are
indeed some obvious parallels, including dictatorship and mili¬
tarism, and then the fact that the Soviet Union seems to be
oppressing those very same groups that the Nazis at first oppressed,
and then tried to exterminate. It is perhaps more fruitful to
contemplate the implications of the analogy than to examine its
dubious merits, for this opinion of the Soviet Union does draw our
attention to the undoubted fact that there has been no adequate
Western response to the wholly unprecedented accumulation of
military power which the Kremlin has achieved.
Those who belong to this school of thought can legitimately
compare the present conduct of the West with the British and
French failure to maintain forces sufficient to deter Hitler from his
aggressions. And more parallels may be drawn between the
emotional and intellectual atmosphere of our day and the ‘culture of
appeasement’ of the 1930s - with an equally paralysing fear of
conflict now being sustained by the terror of nuclear war in place of
the .imagined gas-filled bombs that seemed so terrifying in 1938.
One notes the eagerness with which the Kremlin’s most trans¬
parently manipulative disarmament offers are received in the West,
and one notes also the ill-tempered and suspicious impatience that
awaits each American call for a strengthening of the Atlantic
Alliance. The very words nowadays heard in Bonn and The Hague
forcefully recall the fretful anxiety of Paris and London for one
another in Hitler’s day, when each feared that the other might not
xii