Air University Review, May-June 1971
A multitude of experts and nonexperts have produced works dealing with Soviet foreign policy and a lesser number have tried to describe the military power underlying the Kremlin policies, but few analysts have combined the two. Thomas W. Wolfe, in a recently published book, has made just such an attempt.* Although he makes a valiant effort to interweave the foreign- and military-policy threads into a tightly woven whole, the final product emerges as two studies: one of them is concerned with the Kremlin’s objectives outside Russia, especially in Western Europe, and the other is a description and analysis of Soviet military policies over the last quarter of a century. Wolfe’s technique is first to describe the foreign policy of an era, say Khrushchev’s, next to analyze the military side of the picture, and finally to show the interaction of the two policies. On the whole he is successful since he keeps the reader aware that the effectiveness of Soviet foreign policy is to a large extent dependent on its underlying military force.
In this book Dr. Wolfe handles time somewhat as a landscape painter treats space; the farther events are from the present, the less space they are allotted. Thus the description of the Stalinist period (1945-53) takes up only ten percent of the book, the Khrushchevian era (l954-64) gets thirty percent, while the Brezhnev-Kosygin regime (up to mid-1969) accounts for sixty percent of the work. Since the reader will probably be more interested in recent events than in earlier happenings, the book would seem ideally proportioned.
In his analysis of Soviet postwar policies, especially as they concerned Europe, both East and West, Wolfe devotes considerable space to Stalin’s military problems. These can be roughly reduced to two primary objectives: to break the American nuclear monopoly and to hold Western Europe hostage while accomplishing the first task. Stalin was eminently successful in both.
His successor, Khrushchev, inherited the perplexing dilemma of how to translate Soviet military power, now including nuclear armaments, into effective political power. The paradox was, and still is, that the newly developed weapon systems tend to multiply risks and thus narrow the opportunities for turning military might into political advantage, especially in such a sensitive area as Western Europe. The result was Khrushchev’s “revision” of the time-honored Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist dogma that armed conflict between the two systems (Communism and Imperialism) was inevitable. Khrushchev advanced the new doctrine that war between the two major nuclear powers was no longer inevitable. This so-called “peaceful coexistence” line, however, offended the Chinese Communists and also violated the Clausewitz dictum accepted by Lenin that war was a continuation of politics. As Wolfe points out, the main problems Khrushchev faced were as follows: First, whether to settle for an inferior posture in strategic weapons or to go for a war-winning capability by trying to outbuild the United States; second, what to do about the balance or lack of balance in conventional and strategic forces in the Soviet Union itself; and, finally, what policy to follow in regard to the Warsaw Pact. Economic resource limitations, the recalcitrance of the more traditionally minded Soviet military leaders, and Khrushchev’s desire to gain easy diplomatic victories all combined to make the Khrushchevian era rather erratic. He went from a condemnation of Malenkov’s “war-will-end-civilization” view in 1954 to the acceptance of that same view later; but it did not stop him from indulging in brinkmanship in the Berlin crises or from making his ill-fated Cuban missile gambit. He alienated many of his military leaders by trying to reduce military expenditures at the expense of the conventional forces.
The main body of Wolfe’s opus is concerned with the adventures of the “collective leadership” between the ouster of Khrushchev in October 1964 and mid-1969. While the coverage of this period is far more detailed than that of the twenty-year span preceding it, the approach is the same: an interweaving of political and military factors in the formation of Soviet policies in Eastern and Western Europe. In this section, however, the Sino-Soviet split, the escalation of the war in Vietnam, and events in the Middle East have to be dealt with at some length, since they complicated the Soviet attitude toward Europe.
The Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership inherited a number of problems when it took over in October 1964. Relations with Peking were extremely bad; there was a good deal of ferment in the European satellites, especially in Romania; Soviet involvement in the Middle East had been getting deeper and deeper after 1955; and the German problem was still a worrisome thing for the Kremlin On the other hand, NATO seemed to be disintegrating nicely, and the Soviets had some hopes that it might founder by its twentieth birthday in 1969. A détente with the United States had followed the signing of the limited test-ban treaty in July 1963, and the war in Vietnam was just big enough to keep American attention away from Europe. On the whole, the new leadership had every reason to be optimistic. A slackening of tensions with Peking and a weakening of NATO, both thought of as possible, should enable the new leaders to gain influence in Western Europe.
Then things began to go awry. Mao Tse-tung got even nastier than in the Khrushchev period, and Sino-Soviet tensions increased. The escalation of the war in Vietnam meant a deeper Soviet involvement. Romania grew even more independent, and by early 1968 Czechoslovakia was beginning its attempt at “humanizing” Communism under the guidance of Dubcek. Soviet influence in the Middle East became even greater after the war in July 1967, but the danger of a Soviet-American confrontation in the area also increased. In addition, the Soviet people were growing restless, a desire for change seemed to be in the wind, and the influence of developments in Czechoslovakia was frightening the Kremlin leaders.
August 1968 was a watershed in the period under discussion. Probably aware that an armed invasion of Czechoslovakia would stop the erosion of NATO unity, the Soviet leaders nevertheless went ahead with it. Militarily it was a success, but politically it was messy—so messy that the “Brezhnev Doctrine” had to be invented to justify it. Wolfe lists the benefits accruing to Moscow in the short run: the invasion reestablished the credibility of Soviet military power in East Europe; it prevented the spread of Czech reformist ideas to the other satellites and to the Soviet Union itself; it increased the Soviet military presence deployed in the Northern Tier of the Warsaw Pact area; and it stopped Bonn’s Otipolitik of building bridges to the satellites. On the liability side of the ledger, however, the invasion shattered the image of a mellowing Soviet Union that had been helping to erode the unity of NATO; it split the world Communist movement even further; and it also prompted the United States to pay more attention to its European allies and to put off strategic arms talks with Moscow, at least for the time being.
Having dealt with the varying fortunes of the Brezhnev-Kosygin foreign policy, Wolfe then turns to a description and an analysis of Soviet military policy in the 1965-69 period. He sees Soviet military policy as a reflection of foreign policy. Stalin’s continental policy was buttressed by his continental military power, but Khrushchev’s global foreign policy lacked the necessary military underpinnings to be completely effective. His successors, however, have been developing the military power that Khrushchev lacked. But in all three leadership periods, a strong military posture toward Europe has been maintained.
The Brezhnev-Kosygin regime has devoted increasing amounts of economic resources to the improvement of the Soviet offensive-defensive capabilities on the strategic level while at the same time developing more mobile and versatile conventional forces. The military budget has been increased every year since 1965. As a result, the Soviet strategic posture has been remarkably improved, reaching parity with the United States in ICBM’s by mid-1969, as well as the beginnings of an ABM program. Wolfe states that although there may be differences of opinion among the Soviet military leaders as to the capabilities of the ABM system, none question publicly the desirability of building such a system.
The main innovation under the Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership, however, has been what Wolfe calls the “efforts to improve the mobility and ‘reach’ of Soviet conventional forces.” The naval buildup, the increase in airlift capability, the development of special forces, and the search for bases abroad are all parts of the overall program to improve the “reach” of Soviet conventional forces. He sees this as the military reflection of the Kremlin’s global foreign policy, the Soviet determination to play a major role in the Third World. The increasing naval presence in the Mediterranean and the goodwill visits in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf are intended to support Soviet diplomacy in the Middle East and South Asia. Even the traditional Soviet disdain for aircraft carriers has been partially breached by the construction of helicopter carriers of the Moskva type, which in addition to ASW work can be used for landing operations. The Soviet airlift capability was vividly demonstrated during the seizure of Prague in August 1968, although that operation was not under true combat conditions.
Soviet military doctrine has shown more flexibility in the last few years. It no longer excludes the possibility of nonnuclear warfare or of warfare using tactical nuclear weapons within the framework of so-called “local wars,” to use the Soviet jargon. Some Soviet military theorists even state that the armed forces should be prepared to conduct both all-out war and limited war with or without the use of nuclear weapons. The September 1967 “Dnepr” maneuvers in the Soviet Union were primarily a test of Soviet conventional warfare capabilities. Vis-à-vis Western Europe, however, most Soviet military writers still follow the traditional scenarios involving the use of nuclear weapons by both sides. Wolfe thinks that the low level of the NATO conventional forces leads the Soviet theorists to believe that NATO would be compelled to resort to nuclear weapons rather early in the event of war in Europe.
Wolfe goes into considerable detail in his discussion of the “Soviet military posture toward Europe.” Although the succeeding Soviet regimes have been faced with problems ranging throughout the world from China to Vietnam to the Middle East, they have always retained a strong posture toward Europe. Large conventional forces have been maintained in the Northern Tier of the Warsaw Pact area as well as in those parts of European Russia nearest the satellite borders. Wolfe lists a number of reasons why it might pay the Soviets to reduce these forces in Eastern Europe—the damnable expense, the erosion of NATO unity by reducing the obvious threat, and the use of the troops thus saved as border forces along the border with China. Obviously these arguments are outweighed by the “simple inertia of two-and-a-half decades” of traditional military thinking, the German problem, and the belief that NATO will erode away eventually with or without the presence of Soviet forces in the Northern Tier. But above all, the large conventional forces in that area must remain there to insure satellite compliance with Kremlin directives; the events of 1956 in Hungary and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 demonstrated this necessity, at least in Soviet opinion.
The restoration in 1967 of a separate command for the Soviet ground forces, which had been abolished in 1964, evidences a boost in the prestige of that branch of the services, a prestige that had suffered badly under Khrushchev’s rule. General of the Army I. G. Pavlovsky, the commander in chief of the ground forces, is a deputy defense minister and was made the commander of the invasion forces into Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Unrest in Eastern Europe, the Soviet scenario for any future war in Europe, and a 6850-mile common border with a hostile China should insure the prosperity of the ground forces for some time to come.
Wolfe sees little evidence of incipient changes in the Soviet control of the Warsaw Pact forces, unless it is to be more emphasis on the role of the Northern Tier with Soviet forces filling in the gap left by the unreliability of the Czechs. Romania’s agitation for rotation of command and for consultation with Pact members concerning the use of nuclear weapons seemed futile before August 1968 and more so since.
In his final chapter Wolfe discusses a number of questions relating to the changing military balance between the Soviet Union and the United States and its effects upon both the European and the wider, global aspects of the relationship between the two superpowers. After discussing many of the possibilities that may ensue if the Soviets attain either parity or superiority in the military balance, he finds it prudent to assume that the Soviet leadership “may accept greater risks in the process of trying to extract political gains from a changed strategic equation, thus introducing new elements of turbulence into international relations.” In the case of Europe, which constitutes in Soviet eyes the main arena of world politics, Wolfe asks whether the strain on deterrence might increase considerably given the preponderant Soviet conventional strength no longer checkmated by superior American strategic power. It is the possibility of such a situation that leads Wolfe to question the advisability of a strategic arms limitation agreement.
Even outside Europe, where United States and Soviet military power overlap, the changing of the military power equation might tempt the Kremlin to press for political gains and thus lead to a Great Power confrontation. Although the Soviet leadership has continually asserted its determination to avoid a confrontation with the United States, under the above circumstances it might blunder into actions which could lead to just such a dangerous situation. To quote Wolfe:
The impression of an incumbent regime prone to act unpredictably under the pressure of the Czechoslovak crisis does nothing to increase confidence in the collective judgment of Soviet leaders. Wolfe ends his book with a discussion of future Soviet conduct, which will in the final analysis be determined by the direction in which the Soviet system itself moves. He sees two main possibilities: either a Soviet Union basically evolving toward a more responsible role in international politics and adjusting to reform and liberalization within the nation; or the alternative possibility of a Soviet Union “backing into the future on the basis of old politics and habits more likely to promote global ferment and discord than world stability.”
Minor carping and nit-picking aside, this is an excellent book. It is well written and is a tribute to the author’s incisive thought and encyclopedic knowledge of things Soviet. Wolfe’s analysis of the Stalinist period will not endear him to the revisionist school, which sees the Cold War as foisted upon a gentle Stalin by the U.S. “imperialists.” Neither is his book likely to become a source of quotes for “doves,” who are inclined to advocate a unilateral American cutback in military capabilities. It is a work that posits a continuing Soviet determination to play a larger role in the world arena, a role dependent upon an ever stronger Soviet military posture. The scholarly apparatus is a bit awe-inspiring (some 1843 footnotes, many of them virtual bibliographies on specific topics), and the publisher should be congratulated for putting the footnotes where they belong—at the foot of the page. For once, that favorite old chestnut of reviewers, so often misleading, that “this book deserves a place in the library of the reader,” is truly applicable —this book does deserve such a place!
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
* Thomas W. Wolfe, Soviet Power and Europe, 1945-1970 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970, $3.95), 534 pp.
Dr. Kenneth R. Whiting (Ph.D., Harvard University) is a member of the Documentary Research Division, Air University. A frequent contributor to Air University Review, he is the author of The Soviet Union Today: A Concise Handbook (1962) and of numerous monographs on Russian subjects. Dr. Whiting formerly taught Russian history at Tufts College.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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