ABSTRACT
Roughly speaking, Soviet military doctrine corresponds to what the people in the West might call military “policy,” implying a set of major principles agreed to by the political and military leadership. However, it would be wrong either to ascribe such practices solely to the Soviets or to conclude from the obvious manipulation of public opinion that Soviet military doctrine is a concept with no real-world significance. This is something of a simplification, since, as the people have noted, the operational aspect of US strategic doctrine under McNamara was also directed at giving the president some options for conducting nuclear war at a level below massive retaliation. The Soviet military objective, which persists despite Gorbachev's stated future hopes for a transition to reasonable sufficiency, is to maintain the damage-limitation capability of Soviet strategic nuclear forces. Nonetheless, the USSR has gradually been moving in the direction of adopting crisis-prevention and crisis-management techniques.
