ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the significance of the new thinking and its implications for actual Soviet foreign-military policy. Specifically, it is divided into four parts: characteristics of the new thinking, significance of the new thinking and its implications, the new thinking and Soviet military doctrine and the military's attitude toward the new thinking. The new thinking can be reduced to two interrelated concepts: interdependence and mutual security. Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev's speech at the Moscow Peace Forum discussed the question of security in the nuclear age in the context of global problems and maintained that regional conflicts should not be viewed through the geostrategic vision of East-West conflict. The new thinking contains two contradictory elements: the acceptance of mutual deterrence by means of strengthened strategic stability and the rejection of deterrence itself. Gorbachev's arms control initiatives are not the only evidence that the Soviet Union is moving to accept mutual deterrence through strengthened strategic stability.
