The Longest Race

Ever since World War II, when the United States and the Soviet Union first found themselves facing each other as dominant world powers, policymakers here have been unable to determine exactly what Soviet intentions really are. Presidents have alternately viewed the Russians as a hostile foe to whom vigilance is the only appropriate response or a superpower with whom peaceful coexistence is possible. Whether this inconsistency stems from an erratic Soviet course or from the observers' ideological fluctuation, arms control will be impossible even to begin without some consensus on Soviet foreign policy.

In The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, David Holloway tries to map the continuity in Soviet military policy, drawing from it a fuller perception of Soviet designs. Holloway seeks to put the rise of Soviet military power in its historical context; then he extrapolates. The book is not an analysis of Soviet foreign policy--it treats only its military aspect--but nevertheless makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on the nuclear debate.

The Soviet military establishment, Holloway explains, grew out of the need to defend the young Bolshevik government against civil war and foreign intervention. When it became obvious that the Russian Revolution would not be followed by similar uprisings in the West, leaders of the Soviet Union quickly abandoned the Leninist concept of a people's militia in a well-equipped standing army that would ardently defend "socialism in one country." Upon accession to power, Stalin committed the Soviet Union to "catching and overtaking the capitalist countries." Holloway finds the early roots of the arms race. As he goes on to show, the surprise German attack on Russia in June 1941 left an indelible mark on the minds of Soviet strategists, who have since determined never to allow such vulnerability again.

But the real impetus to the arms contest, according to the author, came in the post-war settlements. In contrast to Americans who believed that the newly developed and used atomic bomb had little leverage in U.S. foreign policy, the Soviets viewed the mighty weapon as the Allies' means to extract concessions from Stalin. Thus began the familiar pattern of Soviet attempts to match Western technological and military breakthroughs.

Holloway argues that over the past 30 years Soviet achievements have drawn level with American ones--even, as with the inter-continental missiles, raising the competition to new levels. Although it costs Moscow more to build weapons of similar quality to those of the NATO forces, since Soviet technology is of a lower caliber, a rough equality will probably remain the rule for the foreseeable future.

Such a likelihood suggests that the current Administration's initiative to pursue nuclear unassailability may be futile, since the Soviet Union refuses to accept inferior status and has the means to hold its ground.

Which brings us to parity. Officially, the Soviet Union favors parity with the United States, but the nations' definitions differ. For Moscow, parity is not simply an equal level of forces but also an equal position in world affairs, including the license to meddle in Third World affairs as the Americans do. What emerges from Holloway's appraisal of Soviet policy is their determination to assert their status as a world power, which, despite Reagan's denials, it is.

"The primary goal of military preparations is to prevent world nuclear war," Holloway writes. "At the same time, however, a strong emphasis on the need to prepare to such a war has been a distinctive feature of Soviet military thinking in the nuclear age." In other words, though the Soviets agree that deterrence and mutual vulnerability are crucial for world stability, they do not actually rule out the possibility of a nuclear conflict; if it does occur, they are determined to win.

A good third of The Soviet Union and the Arms Race discusses the inner workings of the Soviet military industry. Holloway laboriously describes the defense bureaucracy and the apparatus of weapons production. The Soviet economy is geared to defense production--which absorbs the best minds, skills, and resources available--and hampered by it, as each year it gobbles roughly 12 percent of the Gross National Product. The chronic problem of the industry is its discouragement of innovation from below, which reflects the general rigidity of the economy. Holloway points out that Soviet research and development continually stresses evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, progress in weapons design.

The book's greatest weakness comes in its limited attention to the role of ideology in Soviet military policy--an issue which, though perhaps is outside the work's scope, is impossible to divorce from any discussion of nuclear arms. Holloway, like many American officials, seems undecided on how much of Soviet action derives from its stance as protector of the socialist faith and how much from its role as super-power. In the end, he attributes too much to Merlots-Leninist doctrine and not enough to sheer Machiavellian power.

Rejecting the traditional George Kennan have that Soviet expansion is the result of the regime's need to justify its rule, Holloway contends the Soviet union in the Third World are motivated by a conviction of capitalism and imperialism will inevitably colleges:

In Soviet theory it is not Soviet actions that move the world from capitalism to socialism, but the contradictions inherent in capitalism itself. These contradictions give rise to revolutionary and national liberation movements which to over throw the capitalist states and damage their network of imperialist domination.

The role of the military, then, is "to aid national liberation movements and newly independent states resist the forces of imperialism." That such an ideology is little more today than a convenient tool with which Soviet leaders justify their activities abroad can hardly be debated.

The Soviet Union and the Arms Race thus presents a picture of a nation determined to retain its position as a world power, no matter what the cost. Holloway predicts that the 1980s will be a turning point within the Soviet Union and in U.S. Soviet relations as a new generation of leaders come to power. The two alternatives open to the Soviets are not without precedent. If the United States is currently best on achieving military superiority, as Holloway claims, the Soviets will respond as in the past with an all-out effort to keep up If, however, the United States moves to improve tips with Moscow, then, in view of the current economic hardships and troubles in Poland and Afghanistan the Soviet Union might be moved to revive the policy of peaceful coexistence that climaxed with defensive in the early 1970s. In either case, Holloway's main implication --that the Soviets see the bull in the U.S. court--should certainly not be lost on leaders here.