ABSTRACT
Shortly after his inauguration in January 1969, President Richard Nixon outlined the tenets of a new US strategic doctrine that was to become known as the Nixon Doctrine. The body of Soviet views on the nature of the Nixon Doctrine and realistic deterrence was strongly reflected in their military programs and foreign policy behavior during the period from 1969 to 1982. In the April 1977 issue of Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal an article appeared that analyzed the development of US strategic doctrine in the postwar period. The doctrine considers total nuclear war as a war between two opposing social systems, capitalist and socialist. It is considered, that a future war will be coalitional, short and decisive, with the mass use of nuclear-rocket weapons. On the whole, the Soviet analyses of the Nixon Doctrine and realistic deterrence were quite accurate.
