ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the continuity of Soviet military thought during the past two decades regarding the most fundamental questions of war and peace, notwithstanding a pronounced shift since the late 1970s in the tone and emphases of Moscow’s declaratory line on strategic matters. There have been repeated complaints voiced over the years that American defense planning has been overly abstracted from political reality, consistent within its own largely technical terms of reference, but insufficiently responsive to those distinctive stylistic traits of the enemy against whom our weapons and strategies have primarily been directed. The combined message formed by these propositions soon became the predominant refrain of Soviet external commentary. Brezhnev routinely reiterated the main points of his Tula remarks at every opportunity and made a special point of emphasizing them in interviews with Western journalists. The Soviets have also sought to bring such engineered revisionism in the recent stance on the ABM issue.
