ABSTRACT
The professed goal of the Soviet effort to provide for security vis-a-vis the outside world was the 'reining-in of imperialism'. The Leonid Brezhnev security concept had far-reaching practical consequences at the military level. In official portrayal, military power can be dispersed with not only in the perspective of foreign-policymaking. It is also of decreasing value when it comes to international security. The Soviet Union's concept of security during the Brezhnev period was consistent with the general idea that the Western countries were the enemy and had to be suspected of an innate drive to unleash war should they be given the opportunity to do so. After World War II, some principal elements of military security emerged in Europe under the overarching umbrella of the American-Soviet strategic deterrence relationship. Military power has been accorded a crucial role in Soviet foreign policy, since the Soviet Union possesses little else but troops and weapons on which to base its claim to world prominence.
