Masarykova univerzita
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2. 4 Process of ChangeIn 1987, the Defense Council of the Soviet Union introduced a new military doctrine2 based on Mikhail Gorbachev's, the former General Secretary and later first Soviet President, “new thinking”. The new Soviet doctrine was named “defensive doctrine” based on ideological revisions in accordance with new thinking. The Twenty-seventh Party Congress adopted a new viewpoint on former Soviet concept of “peaceful coexistence”3. The “humankind interests” prevailed over the “class interests”; the Congress left the idea of inevitability of war between socialist and imperialist camp, if the nuclear weapons had existed. The humankind values and survival of mankind were to be put first. As Gorbachev put it, “New political thinking […] categorically dictates the character of military doctrines. They must be strictly defensive” (quoted in Odom 1998: 113). The defensive aspect of reform was anchored in defense of homeland, and more sober and non-ideological view in comparison to the past commitments of building up military base for inter-class struggle, and supporting the members of socialist club throughout the world. The formulation of new aims came, among other things, from the urgent need to revive the collapsing Soviet economy through “perestroika”, and from the continuing change of Soviet society through “glasnost”4. Essentially, the defensive doctrine dictated the radical cuts in defense spending, and hence “yes” to various arms-control agreements, even the unilateral disarmament. Once Gorbachev began a process of “perestroika” it became soon apparent that without a military reform, and with a military consuming huge amounts of resources, no change was possible. The need for holding down military expenditures to make capital available for the civilian economy stood clearly behind this new doctrine. After Gorbachev's speech in January 1986 about a nuclear-free world by the year 2000, there also remained no doubts that he had reached a strong, personal determination to end arms race, no matter what5 (Odom 1998: 94). Concerning arms control, Gorbachev was one of the vociferous proponents of unilateral steps.6 On his side stood the fact that the correlation of forces between the socialist and imperialist camp was not shifting in favor of socialism, and the military program of the US posed new technological challenges that Soviets could not hope to meet. However, he had to face many constraints from side of the Party and military-industrial complex, as well as from weak and fractured Soviet institutional structure unable to respond adequately to the new trends. On more than one occasion Gorbachev discovered that he was being deceived by both the military and the representatives of military-industrial complex (Military-Industrial Commission of the Russian Federation, VPK7). One of the most striking case is Krasnoyarsk radar which was a clear violation of the ABM treaty, and eventually the Soviet side had to admit it8 (Odom 1998: 87 – 107, 142 – 143, 216). In the last three years of Soviet regime, Gorbachev sponsored changes that reduced the authority of Communist Party and her agencies, and invigorated the foreign policy role of the institutions of the government of the USSR. According to those who planned a coup of August 1991 and some other observers, these changes in long-standing party institutions prepared the way not only for the fall of communism, but for the disintegration of the USSR itself (Donaldson – Nogee 2009: 123). The figures reveal that the Soviet regime was at last serious about significant reductions in military spending. The figure below shows the cuts in categories operation and maintenance, research and development, procurement, military construction, and military pensions. Both economic and political changes were yet occurring beyond the central planning, hence, by 1991, those figures had lost its meaning. Besides, the restrains of military spending were not coordinated with huge, newly launched military conversion programs. The size of military-industrial sector whose parts were to be conversed for civilian purposes, were with its estimated 30 percent of the gross domestic product a significant obstacle to economic reform, not mentioning the reluctance and resistance to change of VPK (Odom 1998: 231 – 235, 242). Table 2: Soviet defense spending, 1989 – 19909 S  ource: Odom 1998: 231 The three developments: force reductions and massive withdrawals from Eastern Europe and Mongolia, negative public reaction, and the resulting conscript revolt were advanced by 1991. As a result, the Soviet military rapidly fell into chaos and decay, and, especially in lower-level units, disintegration. Surprisingly, they did not collapse outright. The full disintegration of the Soviet army had to go through one more phase – a creation of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on the meeting of leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus in Belovezhskaya Pushcha in Belarus on December 8, 1991. Central-Asian republics (the Baltic republics and Georgia refused to join) signed the protocol on enlargement on December, 21 in Alma-Ata and joined the CIS10. The agreement went into effect at midnight January 1, 1992, and Soviet Union formally ceased to exist. In consequence to the formation of CIS, it was determined that Boris Yeltsin, a new leader of Russia, would gain the control of nuclear forces. A reportedly cold exchange of nuclear codes between Yeltsin and Gorbachev on December 25, 1991, marked the end of Soviet military and the beginning of what should soon become the Russian military.11 In the follow-up processes the nuclear weapons located in former Soviet republic were handed over to the Russian Federation, and the missile sites and facilities were treated in bilateral contracts. However the Soviet military was a past, the structure of party organs in military was surviving long after the demise of Soviet army (Odom 1998: 350, 366, 371 – 373). As virtually every mention of arms control during the Cold War points out the process itself served to mutually beneficial political purposes. During the hottest times of Cold War arms control negotiations often provided communication channel between the adversaries on security issues and conveyed the desire of both Moscow and Washington to keep their enmity from leading to Armageddon. Consequentially, the long years of apparent deadlock that produced no treaties helped educate Soviet leadership about concepts of stability and especially about utility (or lack thereof) of nuclear superiority – an educational process that contributed to the new thinking of Mikhail Gorbachev and his Foreign Minister Eduard Schevardnadze, and influenced the new generation of security and foreign policy specialists that have emerged since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Also even the modest agreements that were reached, if only to cap the nuclear forces, served to the mutual good of making both sides more predictable. In Washington, for instance, many military leaders advocated sticking with the 1972 ABM Treaty, or with the unratified 1979 SALT II Treaty in order to maintain the achieved level of predictability about Soviet forces. However, the chief explicit political purposes in the various negotiations were more than often part of the search for unilateral advantage; for example, during the negotiating of the INF Treaty, the Soviet Union advanced various proposals designed in part to drive a wedge between the NATO allies. The prevailing belief was that, given the conflicting political and strategic interests of the two sides, it was more useful simply to reach agreements meeting their minimum requirements than to try to reconcile or even understand each other’s strategic plans or goals. That approach remained in place yet throughout the final days of START I and the talks leading to START II; despite of the fact that the late Soviet-era treaties (INF, START) were of absolutely different qualitative levels compared to their predecessors. For instance, START II Treaty included the elimination of all ground-based, multiple-warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM's was the area of Russian greatest investment, and thus, advantage), while permitting to keep the substantial number of such missiles at sea (where the US enjoyed substantive advantage) (Walker 1994: 7 – 10; Odom 1998: 99). While the world made a big step forward since the times of Cold War, Russian military thinking still bears some resemblance to the Soviet times. Notwithstanding that the process of change has begun in Gorbachev's era of new thinking, symbolized by processes “perestroika” and “glasnost”, Russian attitude towards the questions of war and peace has truly started to change much later, predominantly in geographical direction, from what could be called Euro-Atlanticism in the 1990s to the more recent neo-Eurasianist realpolitik12 (Brannon 2009: 21). Download 0.58 Mb. Share with your friends:
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