Soviet debate on missile defense
Although the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) is meant to cope with the danger of a Soviet nuclear attack, the recent US debate over SDI has paid surprisingly little attention to Soviet views of ballistic missile defense. Despite the existence of a substantial body of pertinent scholarship, the debate has failed to take adequate account of major changes in Soviet ballistic missile defense policy since the mid-1960s. It has also neglected the links between current Soviet military policy and broader Soviet political and economic choices. The Soviets regard SDI not as a novel undertaking to reduce the risks of nuclear war but as an extension of the geopolitical competition between the superpowers. This competition has been dominated in the 1980s, in the Soviet view, by sharply increased US assertiveness and the decline of detente. Viewing SDI as a manifestation of these general trends, Soviet decision makers find the prospect of an unregulated race in ballistic missile defenses and military space technologies deeply unsettling. The deterioration of superpower relations has raised serious doubts in Moscow about the wisdom of Soviet external policy during the 1970s and has provoked sharp internal differences over policy toward the US. Already highly suspicious of the Reagan administration, the elite is united by a general conviction that SDI is an American gambit that may ultimately undercut past Soviet strategic gains and pose a grave new threat to Soviet security. 14 references.
- Research Organization:
- Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC
- OSTI ID:
- 6455103
- Journal Information:
- Bull. At. Sci.; (United States), Vol. 43:3
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
29 ENERGY PLANNING
POLICY AND ECONOMY
BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
USA
USSR
ARMS CONTROL
POLITICAL ASPECTS
TREATIES
ASIA
EASTERN EUROPE
EUROPE
INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS
NATIONAL DEFENSE
NORTH AMERICA
350100* - Arms Control- Policy
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450202 - Explosions & Explosives- Nuclear- Weaponry- (-1989)
290600 - Energy Planning & Policy- Nuclear Energy