Soviet Security in Flux. Occasional Paper 33.

If U.S. foreign policy is to be prudent and effective, it must cease relying on the doctrinaire images and cold war rhetoric of the past and take into account five intactable problems, none of them specifically military, that the Soviet Union faces. These problems are: (1) unabating deficiencies in its economy; (2) a precarious battle with communist orthodoxy and alliance management in Eastern Europe; (3) a jittery relationship with China; (4) an adverse shift in the balance of world power; and (5) the constraint which global interdependency and the thermonuclear age impose on the rational formulation of defense policies. The future will be intensely demanding for the Soviet Union because it has achieved global military capabilities at precisely the time its economy appears worn out. U.S. leaders need to undertake frequent fresh appraisals of Soviet threats and realistic capabilities in the domestic and international contexts in which they occur. Defense strategists should not attribute to Soviet foreign policy nonexistent successes, but rather should be critical of claims that the balance of power has shifted to the Soviets. Both countries should agree to a moratorium on the habitual counting of weapons. Finally, the United States should be skeptical about the view that problems besetting Soviet decision makers can be resolved by war. (Author/KC)