ABSTRACT
This chapter describes three aspects of threat perceptions, namely, capabilities, goals, and the political environment. The secretive nature of Soviet dispositions has always tended to sustain a natural inclination of Western policy makers and large segments of the public to base threat assessments on the scrutiny of physical capabilities and military doctrine rather than on an admittedly difficult analysis of Moscow's political intentions. Generally speaking, East-West relations in the early 1980s were characterized by a militarization and re-ideologization of politics, by megaphone diplomacy and a marked immobilism of Soviet policy, domestically as well as internationally. By the mid-1980s, however, the acuteness of threat perceptions themselves was increasingly viewed by policymakers and the public, particularly in Western Europe, as potential sources of instability and crisis. In contrast the Soviet invasion in some sense represented a failure of Soviet policy, a sign of weakness, rather than increased threat.
