Gorbachev And His Generals

The Reform Of Soviet Military Doctrine

William C. Green

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429714252
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This book investigates the debate over Soviet military doctrine and changes in civil-military relations in the Soviet Union since 1985. One of Gorbachev's greatest challenges is to apply "new thinking" to the military sphere. Under this rubric such phrases as "reasonable sufficiency", and "reliable defence" are used by Soviet military leadership to

1
Soviet Military Doctrine: Continuity and Change?

William F. Scott

Is Soviet military doctrine now of “a purely defensive character?” Are Soviet forces maintained only at a level of “reasonable sufficiency?” Kremlin leaders make major efforts to convince the outside world that fundamental changes are occurring in Soviet military policies. They are heralded as part of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new thinking.”

But there is nothing new in these expressions. Gorbachev’s predecessors implemented these slogans to change Western perceptions of Soviet military power. What is new is the skill of the public relations campaign to sell Gorbachev as the driving force behind glasnost and perestroika. To confuse the situation further, many words have different meanings in the Soviet Union than in the West. Military doctrine is a case in point.

In the United States military doctrine simply is a set of principles for the use of forces in combat. We have a “Navy doctrine,” “tactical doctrine,” “Air Force doctrine,” and so on.

In contrast, in the Soviet Union military doctrine is the military policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Its edicts have the force of law. As stated by Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai Ogaikov, military doctrine is to answer the following five questions:

1. What is the degree of probability of future war, and with what enemy will one have to deal?
2. What character might the war take that the country and its Armed Forces might have to wage?
3. What goals and missions might be assigned to the Armed Forces in anticipation of such a war, and what Armed Forces is it necessary to have in order to fulfill the assigned goals?
4. In what way, proceeding from this, should military structuring be accomplished, and in what way should the army and the country be prepared for war?
5. By what methods should the war be conducted, if it breaks out?¹

If one studies Marshal Vasilii Sokolovski’s Military Strategy, written in the 1960s, it will be found that all of these five questions were discussed in this work, although not specifically identified. It was not until 1974 that they first were spelled out by Marshal Andrei Grechko, then the Soviet Minister of Defense.² In 1982 Marshal Ogarkov made slight changes to Grechko’s wording, but the essence of the five questions remained the same. The 1986 Military Encyclopedic Dictionary defines military doctrine as the military policy of the CPSU, and it “is concerned with the essence, arms, and character of a possible future war, the preparation of the country and its armed forces for it, and the methods by which it will be fought.”³ This basically covers the points made both by Grechko and Ogarkov.

In theory, Soviet military doctrine is formulated by the Central Committee. In actual fact, policy guidelines for doctrine probably come from the shadowy Defense Council. This body, headed by the Party’s General Secretary, is concerned with the preparation of the entire nation for the possibility of future war, to include its industry, population, and armed forces.⁴ Soviet theorists stress a two-sided military doctrine, the political and military-technical. The political side dominates. New technology, leading to new weapons, forces change in the military-technical side.

The Defensive Nature of Soviet Military Doctrine

Soviet spokesmen seek to convince the West that their military doctrine consists of a “purely defensive character,” even claiming that this always was the case. They do not now admit that throughout most of the 1970s Soviet military textbooks specified that their military doctrine was “offensive.” For example, the 1971 Officer’s Handbook stated that “Soviet military character has an offensive character’ (Sovetskaia voennaia doktrina nosit nastupatel’ ni kharakter).⁵ This changed, however, not because of any policy set by Gorbachev but as a result of policies during Brezhnev’s tenure as General Secretary.

For example, in May 1980, the Political Consultative Committee (PCQ of Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) General Secretaries issued a declaration that they “have not, have never had and will not have any other strategic doctrine other than a defensive one.”⁶ In Soviet terminology “strategic doctrine” is not the same as “military doctrine,” although the distinction is not altogether clear. Marshal Ogarkov, both in 1981 and 1982, following the 26th Party Congress stressed the Soviet Union’s “defensive military doctrine.”

Continued assenions in the 1980’s about military doctrine being “defensive,” in contrast to material written earlier, probably confused Soviet officers. To clarify this, a 1987 military textbook, The Military-Theoretical Heritage of V.I. Lenin and Problems of Contemporary War, explained that the offensive remains the primary method of waging war.⁷ However, in its political aspect, war will be waged only for defensive purposes. Since the political side of doctrine dominates, the change in wording from “offensive” to “defensive” posed no problem.

The Concept of Reasonable Sufficiency

Many in the West hope that current statements by Soviet leaders about their forces being maintained at a level of “reasonable sufficiency” mean a change in Soviet thinking. This concept, however, was expressed long before Gorbachev became the Party’s General Secretary. At the 1980 meeting of the WTO PCC, the final declaration stated that the member nations “invariably advocate safeguarding the military balance at ever lower levels, for reduction and elimination of the military confrontation in Europe.”⁸ Elsewhere the declaration called for “renunciation of the use of force or threat of force, limitation of forces and arms of each state or group of states solely to suit defense needs [emphasis added], and mutual renunciation of attempts at gaining military supremacy.” Essentially, this is what is said today.

Kommunist Voorushennykh Sil, the official journal of the Main Political Administration (MPA) of the Soviet Armed Forces, often indicates the ideological line that the Party directs the Armed Forces to follow. Since mid-1987 this journal has published a continuous series of articles discussing the concept of reasonable sufficiency. All the authors make clear that Soviet nuclear forces must be able to deliver a retaliatory strike on an opponent, regardless of the possible scenario under which an opponent’s first strike is made.

This Soviet emphasis on “reasonable sufficiency,” made at a time when there are hopes in the West for a meaningful arms control agreement with Moscow, is carefully studied by NATO defense specialists as well as by the Chinese. Soviet spokesmen now press the matter of “reasonable sufficiency” in television programs and radio broadcasts. NATO political leaders and scholars trek to Moscow to hear more about this new Soviet view on the required level of military forces.

Soviet spokesmen are very vague on the meaning of “reasonable sufficiency.” Colonel (ret.) Lev Semeiko, formerly on the faculty of the Frunze Military Academy and currently a member of Dr. Georgi Arbatov’s Institute of the USA and Canada, made one of the more coherent explanations. In Semeiko’s view, the concept of reasonable sufficiency is not for the present, rather it “is oriented to die future and carries a charge of ideas for long-term action.” However, it will not become a reality until “nuclear weapons and other types of mass destruction weapons” are eliminated. He went on to say that:

Sufficiency does not preclude but, on the contrary, presupposes the presence of strategic parity; that decisive factor in preventing war. It is necessary to have within the framework of parity a reasonably sufficient military potential capable of reliably ensuring the security of the USSR and its allies. This means that under contemporary conditions we are obliged to have a guaranteed potential for nuclear retaliation designed to prevent an unpunished nuclear attack under any, even under the most unfavorable, nuclear attack scenarios. In any situation, an answering strike must unacceptably damage the aggressor.⁹

Using Semeiko’s words, one might state that “sufficiency” is all the NATO nations ever wished to achieve; a sufficient military potential capable of reliably ensuring the security of NATO, to include a guaranteed potential for nuclear retaliation!

Even Gorbachev’s “new thinking” is a takeoff from what was written before his designation as General Secretary. A 1984 bode by Anatolii Gromyko, Novoe Myshlenie v Iadernyi Vek,¹⁰ provided many of the concepts expounded today. Some Soviet theorists now state that the “new thinking,” which generally is attributed to Gorbachev, actually began in 1956, when Khrushchev announced that war between communism and capitalism was no longer inevitable.¹¹ This condition, Khrushchev added, was due to the powerful new weapons possessed by the Soviet Union. As Soviet military power grew, later writers stated that the Soviet Union would “force” peaceful coexistence on the “imperialists.” “Reasonable sufficiency” must maintain this capability.

While many in the United States take seriously the Soviet use of “sufficiency” when applied to military forces, Soviet writers were more critical when the expression appeared in a text delivered by former United States President Richard Nixon. In a 1971 article, for example, Colonel V.V. Larionov, then of the Institute of the USA and Canada, chided Nixon’s use of sufficiency in his 1970 foreign policy message. The “sufficiency” concept as a basis for building up the armed forces, Larionov explained “is variable and dependent on subjective appraisals.”¹² But at the same time it is a very useful expression, which can “satisfy the hawks and placate the doves simultaneously.” If only United States analysts would be so critical of the current Soviet usage of the term!

Even though there is no clear evidence of a new Soviet military doctrine, there are attempts by Kremlin leaders to make certain changes in the economic structure of their nation and to convince the West that a new era is beginning in international affairs. It is most difficult to determine what is actually taking place. Disinformation remains a trademark of Soviet actions.

Debates and Disinformation

Since the mid-1950’s the idea of internal Soviet military “doctrinal” debates dominated United States’ perceptions of Soviet military writings. Generally, the debates are perceived as between Soviet “hawks” and “doves,” or the bad guys and the good. In the 1960s the debates were thought to be between the “modernists” who favored emphasis on nuclear weapons and “traditionalists” who stressed conventional forces. In the 1960s, as today, anyone who could produce evidence, real or imaginary, of the Kremlin leadership moving away from reliance on nuclear weapons found a ready hearing. The following item published in the Washington Post in 1967 is illustrative:

London: An article by Soviet Marshal Ivan Yakubovski, new commander of the Warsaw Pact forces, declaring that soldiers and conventional weapons remain East Europe’s primary defense, was seen yesterday as marking the end of former Soviet Premier Khrushchev’s “massive retaliation” policy. Analyzing Yakubovski’s remarks, which appeared in the Soviet newspaper Red Star, Victor Zorza of the Manchester Guardian said the statement represents the first official Soviet admission that Khrushchev’s concept of relying on nuclear arms had been abandoned. It had been in decline since Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964.¹³

The 1967 Washington Post article represented a completely misleading but popular view at that time. Yakubovski, as CINC (commander in chief) of the WTO forces, could scarcely be expected to write that the Armed Forces of Eastern European satellites, armed with non-nuclear weapons, had no role. At the same time he made it clear that nuclear weapons would be decisive in the event of a future war.¹⁴ This article was timed to coincide with the beginning of WTO summer field exercises. Yakubovski repeated the standard expression, found in major articles of that period: “Units and subunits must be prepared to fight with or without the use of the nuclear weapon.” But the idea of internal Soviet doctrinal debates then was in vogue and the “traditional” Soviet leaders had to be shown as winning. In actual fact, during this period the Soviet Union built up its nuclear forces with unprecedented speed.

Another popular view in the United States is that debates take plac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Soviet Military Doctrine: Continuity and Change?
• 2. Assessing Soviet Military Literature: Attempts to Broker the Western Debate
• 3. Civil-Military Relations Under Gorbachev: The Struggle over National Security
• 4. Old Soldiers Never Die: Marshal Akhromeev’s Role in Soviet Defense Decision Making
• 5. Soviet Doctrine and Nuclear Forces into the Twenty-first Century
• 6. Soviet Military Doctrine’s Requirements for a Space TVD
• 7. Perestroika and Soviet Military Personnel
• 8. Changes in Soviet Military Thinking: How Do They Add Up and What Do They Mean for Western Security?
• 9. Soviet Military Reference Works as a Guide in Soviet Military Doctrine
• 10. Conclusions: The Unresolved Agenda
• Appendix 1: The Soviet Military Leadership
• Appendix 2: Gorbachev and the Soviet Military: A Chronology
• List of Contributors
• Index