ABSTRACT
In nearly all indicators of power, except military, the Soviet Union lags substantially behind the United States and its principal allies, notably Western Europe and Japan. An analysis of Soviet military strategy and capabilities is fraught with many problems. The Soviet view of military doctrine, and of military capabilities, differs greatly from that prevalent in the United States and the Western world in many ways. American conceptions of strategy have often been based upon a quest for technical solutions to problems that, like the weapons systems themselves, are considered to be primarily scientific in nature. Soviet strategy is based on the principle enunciated by Clausewitz that warfare is always an extension of politics — that it is subordinated to the political objectives and the foreign policy interests in a “grand strategy” established by the Politburo.
