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Why the Soviets Buy the Weapons They Do

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Matthew A. Evangelista
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Abstract

The authors of three recent books attempt to account for Soviet military developments by exploring a wide range of possible explanations. In Soviet Strategic Forces, Berman and Baker adopt a“requirements“approach; they argue that the Soviet strategic posture has developed mainly in response to threats generated by the West. Andrew Cockburn, in The Threat, maintains that internal factors—in particular, bureaucratic politics and the workings of the military-industrial complex—are responsible for Soviet weapons decisions. David Holloway's more eclectic explanation, in The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, describes both the internal and external determinants of Soviet military policy. The evolution of Soviet regional nuclear policy, and particularly the deployment of the SS-20 missile, can be accounted for by several different explanations—indicating a problem of overdetermination of causes. One way to resolve this problem is by adopting a framework developed by James Kurth to explain U.S. weapons procurement. It suggests that the“modes of causation” for Soviet weapons decisions are generally the opposite of those for American decisions. This generalization is consistent with what an analysis based on the relative strengths of state and societal forces in the two countries would predict.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1984

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References

1 Kurth, , “A Widening Gyre: The Logic of American Weapons Procurement,” Public Policy 19 (Summer 1971), 373404.Google Scholar

2 An excellent study of the RAND strategists—including, among others, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, and Albert Wohlstetter—and the best work on the evolution of U.S. nuclear policy is Fred Kaplan's book, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983).Google Scholar

3 See, most notably, Allison, Graham T., Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)Google Scholar, and Halperin, Morton H., Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1974).Google Scholar

4 For example, Barnet, Richard J., Roots of War (New York: Atheneum, 1972)Google Scholar; Bottome, Edgar M., The Balance of Terror: A Guide to the Arms Race (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Melman, Seymour, Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970).Google Scholar

5 See, in particular, Senghaas, Dieter, Rüstung und Militarismus (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972).Google Scholar

6 Kurth (fn. 1), 377–78.

7 The best work using the requirements approach has been done by Michael MccGwire, particularly on Soviet naval policy. See his articles in The Soviet Union in Europe and the Near East: Her Capabilities and Intentions (London: Royal United Services Institution, 1970); MccGwire, Michael, ed., Soviet Naval Developments: Capability and Context (New York: Praeger, 1973)Google Scholar; MccGwire, Michael, Booth, Ken, and McDonnell, John, eds., Soviet Naval Policy: Objectives and Constraints (New York: Praeger, 1975)Google Scholar; MccGwire, The Rationale for the Development of Soviet Sea Power,” in United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 106/5/927 (May 1980)Google Scholar; and MccGwire, “Naval Power and Global Strategy,” in Leebaert, Derek, ed., Soviet Military Thinking (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981).Google Scholar Another good example is Garthoff's, Raymond L. article, “The Soviet SS-20 Decision,” Survival 25 (May/June 1983), 110–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 The major study is Wohlstetter, , Hoffman, , Lutz, , and Rowen, , Selection and Use of Strategic Air Bases (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1954)Google Scholar, discussed in considerable detail in Kaplan (fn. 2).

9 See Kaplan's discussion, ibid.

10 York, , Race to Oblivion: A Participant's View of the Arms Race (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970)Google Scholar; and York, , The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1976).Google Scholar

11 For some representative case studies, see Morris, Frederic A., ed., “Acquiring Weapons,” Part II, pp. 111215, in Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., June 1975)Google Scholar, Vol. IV, Appendix K, “Adequacy of Current Organization: Defense and Arms Control.” For a similar, but more in-depth approach, see Armacost, Michael H., The Politics of Weapons Innovation: The Thor-Jupiter Controversy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

12 Although Berman and Baker do not fulfill their promise of providing a true requirements analysis, they display a number of compensating strengths. The authors deserve a good deal of credit for their attempt to present a relatively parsimonious explanation for Soviet strategic posture, and also for the amount of detailed information they have compiled on characteristics of Soviet strategic weapons design and deployment. In addition, they provide useful material on U.S. and NATO nuclear weapons deployments, which they see as having greatly influenced Soviet developments. The book—particularly the many informative tables and charts found in the appendices—constitutes a valuable source of reference for researchers in the field of U.S. and Soviet military policy.

13 Cockburn's book is a highly readable and carefully researched work, written with one primary intention: to counteract the practice of “threat inflation” by which some U.S. military and government officials greatly exaggerate Soviet military strength in order to rationalize procurement of the new weapons they favor. Cockburn focuses on four aspects of the Soviet military: the “hordes,” or regular conscript army; the “professional warriors,” or officer corps; the “weapons makers”; and the weapons themselves. For the purposes of this essay, the most relevant sections of Cockburn's book are those in which he discusses the politics of the Soviet High Command, the process by which new weapons are procured, and the characteristics of those weapons.

14 Holloway's book covers a number of topics, including the role of military power in the formation of the Soviet state; the early Soviet nuclear weapons program; Soviet thinking on nuclear war; the role of military power in Soviet foreign policy; Soviet arms control policies; the structure of military research and development; and the role of military production in the Soviet economy. This volume is especially valuable in that it brings together the results of Holloway's many years of research into Soviet military policy in a form more accessible—particularly to nonspecialists—than his original articles and chapters in various books.

15 See the biography by Tolubko, V., the present commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces: Nedelin (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1979).Google Scholar Holloway points out that the officers of the Strategic Rocket Forces “have tended to see their missiles as extensions of artillery, not as pilotless bombers.” He suggests that the artillery concept of “operation in depth” may account somewhat for early Soviet emphasis on regional missiles by encouraging “Soviet designers to concentrate on extending the range of their rockets step by step, thus increasing gradually the Soviet capability to launch deep strikes against the enemy” (p. 153).

16 See Rosen, Steven, ed., Testing the Theory of the Military-Industrial Complex (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1973)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 5 by Aspaturian, Vernon, “The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex: Does it Exist?“103–34Google Scholar; also see McDonnell, John, “The Soviet Defense Industry as a Pressure Group,” in Soviet Naval Policy (fn. 7), 87122.Google Scholar

17 See Holloway, , Technology Management and the Soviet Military Establishment, Adelphi Paper No. 76 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1971)Google Scholar; and his articles in The Soviet Union in Europe and the Near East (fn. 7).

18 Berman has addressed this issue in Soviet Air Power in Transition (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1978); see also Evangelista, Matthew A., “The Evolution of Soviet Tactical Air Forces,” in Jones, David R., ed., Soviet Armed Forces Review Annual (hereafter SAFRA), Vol. VII (Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 1983).Google Scholar

19 Sharp, Jane M. O., “Four Approaches to an INF Agreement,” Arms Control Today 12 (March 1982).Google Scholar

20 Cockburn has covered this issue in some detail in articles in the Columbia Journalism Review 21 (July–August 1982) and The New York Times, April 27, 1982; see also Talbott, Strobe, Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II (New York: Harper Colophon, 1980), 133–35.Google Scholar

21 Kurth, , “Why We Buy the Weapons We Do,” Foreign Policy 11 (Summer 1973), 3356CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also his article in Rosen (fn. 16).

22 ” See, for instance, Horelick, Arnold L. and Rush, Myron, Strategic Power and Soviet Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).Google Scholar

23 Most notably, Katzenstein, Peter J., ed., Between Power and Plenty: Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978)Google Scholar, see especially his introduction and conclusion.

24 See the Associated Press report on the SS-CX-4 in the Washington Post, April 7, 1983; also Arkin, William M., “Soviet Cruise Missile Programs,” Arms Control Today 13 (May 1983).Google Scholar

25 See esp. Holloway, , “Technology and Political Decision in Soviet Armaments Policy,” Journal of Peace Research (No. 4, 1974), 257–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Holloway, , “War, Militarism, and the Soviet State,” Alternatives 6 (March 1980), 5992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Jones, David R., “National Air Defense Forces,” in SAFRA, Vol. V (1981), 81.Google Scholar

27 The expanding-requirements argument is MccGwire's (fn. 7), while the foreign-policy rationale has been put forth by Gorshkov himself; see his Morskaia Moshch' Gosudarstva [Sea Power of the State] (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1979).

28 See Katzenstein (fn. 23). The analysis offered by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel P. Huntington is also generally consistent with this observation; see their Political Power: US/USSR (New York: Viking Press, 1963), esp. chap. 4.

29 Kurth (fn. 1).

30 For the purposes of this essay, the order in which Kurth discussed his “modes of change” will not be followed, so as to permit a chronological presentation of the Soviet cases.

31 Ibid., 396–97. Innovation is made even less expensive when weapons manufacturers are reimbursed by the government for unsolicited, “independent” research and development costs. See Reppy, Judith, “Defense Department Payments for ‘Company-Financed’ R & D,” Research Policy 6 (1977), 396410CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and her The I R & D Program of the Department of Defense, Cornell University Peace Studies Program Occasional Papers, No. 6 (Ithaca, N.Y.: March 1976).

32 I am grateful to Judith Reppy for bringing this point to my attention. A good example of a weapon designer's engaging in bureaucratic politics in order to promote his product is provided by the inventor of the “neutron bomb,” Cohen, Samuel, in The Truth about the Neutron Bomb (New York: William Morrow, 1983).Google Scholar

33 On radar developments, see the memoirs of a former Soviet radar designer, Fedoseev, A., Zapadnia: Chelovek i Sotsializm [The Trap: Man and Socialism] (Frankfurt/Main: Possev-Verlag, 1976)Google Scholar, and Erickson, John, “Radio-location and the Air Defense Problem: The Design and Development of Soviet Radar, 1934–1940, Science Studies 2 (1977), 241–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On aircraft, see the memoirs of designer Iakovlev, A. S., Tsel' Zhizn' [The Goal of a Lifetime] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1966).Google Scholar

34 See Holloway's studies of missile development—in particular his chapter on “Military Technology,” in Amann, Ronald, Cooper, Julian, and Davies, R. W., eds., The Technological Level of Soviet Industry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 407–89Google Scholar: and “Innovation in the Defence Sector,” in Amann, Ronald and Cooper, Julian, eds., Industrial Innovation in the Soviet Union (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 276414.Google Scholar

35 Kurth (fn. 1), 399–400.

36 See speech, Khrushchev's, Pravda, January 15, 1960Google Scholar, and his remarks in his memoirs, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, trans. by Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974). 51.

37 Kurth (fn. 1), 397.

38 Garthoff, Raymond L., “The Soviet SS-20 Decision,” Survival 25 (May–June 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Garthoff, , “Brezhnev's Opening: The TNF Tangle,” Foreign Policy 41 (Winter 19801981), 8294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Kurth (fn. 1), 398.

40 Ibid., 400–401.

41 Garthoff, Raymond L., “SALT and the Soviet Military,” Problems of Communism 24 (January–February 1975), esp. 3032.Google Scholar For a further discussion of the influence of arms control negotiations on military posture, see Sharp, Jane M. O., “Is European Security Negotiable?” in Leebaert, Derek, ed., European Security Prospects for the 1980s (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1979).Google Scholar

42 For details of Soviet and U.S. proposals, see Hardenbergh, Chalmers, ed., The Arms Control Reporter (Brookline, Mass.: Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, monthly).Google Scholar