Soviet Strategic Doctrine and the Soviet-American Global Contest

Abstract

Soviet Military Doctrine, despite the exigencies of the thermonuclear age, continues to follow Clausewitz in viewing war as a continuation of politics by other means. Accordingly, war is regarded both as feasible and winnable, provided the USSR continues to maintain the initiative, to pursue the offensive, and to utilize surprise and deception. These factors mean that an initial blow against an adversary may prove ultimately decisive, but without ensuring that conflict necessarily would be short. Preparations have to be adequate for protracted warfare, with particular emphasis on reserves, military and economic. Pacifist rejection of wars as such is condemned in the USSR for failing to distinguish between just and unjust conflicts, that are judged by their class content—not by the question of who started the fighting. There is little evidence for the view that the Soviet Military Doctrine is the product of military rather than civilian (Party) leaders. In accordance with the dialectic, the USSR believes that balance, or stalemate, is unfeasible as a long-term concept since, ultimately, there are only victors and the defeated.