ABSTRACT

This chapter analyzes the nature of basic political-military strategy, particularly under Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, and assesses its implications for American security policy. It describes Soviet perceptions of the Western Alliance. The chapter aims to identify the major elements of Soviet peacetime strategy toward the Alliance flowing from those perceptions aned asses the implications for the United States. In the conditions of the post-Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) world, the Soviets seek to develop a policy that both influences the Americans to pursue arms control and to abort West European defense cooperation and other negative trends in Western Europe from influencing the Americans. The elimination of the American systems through the INF treaty conveyed to West European elites that American and European interests were different. The minimum security requirement concept could be used by the Alliance to pursue policy on a unilateral basis, rather than be held hostage to Soviet public diplomacy efforts alone.