ABSTRACT
The presumption of the aggressive intentions of the USSR has always been matched by fears at the size of its conventional armed forces and their build-up. These have helped form the basis of general attitudes in NATO countries to the USSR, and lie at the core of NATO strategy and policy planning. Some commentators believe the military balance is so bad for NATO that any talk of caution and margins of error is superfluous. In 1976, the Central Intelligence Agency produced a higher estimate of Soviet military spending than previously, with the result that whereas US and Soviet spending had been thought to be about even, it now appeared that the Soviet figure was some 40 per cent higher than American spending. In the 1979 British defence White Paper it was stated that NATO forces in the eastern Atlantic are outnumbered by the Warsaw Pact, by 30 per cent in surface ships and 50 per cent in submarines.
