WI: Soviets Adopt Minimum Deterrence

Apparently Maoist China did, what if the Soviets did too? The cash saved on the military could be used to save on other areas, and it still provides protection against both US and Chinese aggression. Additionally, would it cause the US to do similar in that regard? This would perhaps lead to an earlier Detente.
 
I think there would be a better chance of it happening before the Cold War is in full swing.

However, even in the 70's, the Soviets not spending half their GNP on defence probably helps their chances of avoiding economic collapse. History nerds sadly lose the most powerful army ever.
 
Hmm. I wonder where the money would go to in this timeline. Economic improvement perhaps?

Likely, with a lot less money spent on their military, they'd have more for other things that can add to the Soviet GDP. Though I'd see it mainly in infrastructure and prestige projects. Maybe more Space Exploration, with better results.
 
If it's prestige, then Space Exploration. That will have very... interesting impacts on the Cold War to say the least. Maybe we'll actually see the development of mass drivers that launch space vehicles?
 
I'm not terribly up on Soviet military history, but the Soviets need that Army for more than just NATO. They also need it to keep down their satellite states.

Minimum Deterrence is significantly harder to implement practically for the USSR than for the US, since they're starting from a point of relative weakness. A silo-based force will be an effective deterrent in the late 60s through the 70s, but if the USSR goes for a true minimum deterrent - say, 500 ICBMs with 3 MIRVs each - and the US doesn't stop building, then by the mid to late 80s US missiles will be getting accurate and numerous enough to put it in real jeopardy.

At this point, the USSR can either switch to launch-on-warning, build more missiles to ensure that some will survive, or transition to an alternative basing mode, such as road-mobile or submarine. Option one may have actually happened IOTL, although I have my doubts, but it creates a significant risk of accidental war. Options two and three are both expensive and will tend to lose the "minimum" part of the deterrent, and option three will require significant R&D.

Or, possibly, the US might react by not building Peacekeeper and Triton, and the arms race stabilizes in the 70s.
 

Sir

Banned
But if the USSR spends less on the military budget, the U.S.A. may correspondingly decrease military spending and have more money for prestige projects of its own. :D
 
Impossible. The USSR was de facto besieged/contained in her immense continental expanse of land, whereas the US up to 1960 (Cuba) had only friendly or cowed neighbors; plus the Soviets had to keep her very reluctant al...subjects in line, and bore the undescribable trauma of Nazi aggression. Any drawdown of military strength was unthinkable till the generation who fought the war was in power.
 
Not necessarily. While they still need armed forces for keeping Satellite states in line, they don't thousands of nuclear bombs. Additionally, Minimum Deterrence would be wise to follow for the US in turn, as it allows both sides to reduce spending on nuclear weapons substantially. In OTL no one was willing to take that first dip unfortunately.

You see, Minimum Deterrence could be implemented in the 1970s, as during that time, the US was going through... cultural changes to say the least. That was the best time the Soviets had to reform, and they should've taken it. One of those could've been a nuclear strategy based on Minimum Deterrence, which would save lots of cash to devote to other areas. Perhaps they could finally transition into, "Peace Communism," if you will.

Whether this saves it, is debatable, however it would probably end the Cold War, or at least make it where the Cold War isn't nearly as combative.
 
1970s for now. Why... not sure. 1950s could work too I suppose.

It would be technically possible in the 1960s, when they had ICBMs in quantity and capable of a direct strike at the USA.

Not before. Soviet bombers would not have been capable of reliably getting through US air defenses, across the distances they'd have to travel.

The pre-ICBM Soviet nuclear forces were a serious threat to Europe and to US forward bases, but not to the USA itself. Minimum deterrence is based on the idea of national leaders realizing that unacceptable losses amount to losing one city, as Kennedy and Khrushchev both realized during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That's a big of an exaggeration of course, as either power could keep on fighting--and certainly would!--after losing considerably more than one city. But politically speaking both realized they'd better not gamble even one city. If the dastardly enemy takes out a dozen or so one black night, in a sneak attack bolt from the blue, that's one thing, but if they do so after an "eyeball-to-eyeball" confrontation where both are deliberately putting their homelands at risk like that--that's something else.

By the early 60's, the Russians could, using missiles, do token damage to the USA itself, and that would be the earliest starting point for them to develop a doctrine of minimal deterrence. Actually since their early missiles required long periods of set-up at bases readily observed and cataloged (though not, with early US satellite tech, kept under constant real-time scrutiny) they'd be vulnerable to a pre-emptive American strike, so the Russians weren't really there yet; only with a reserve of launch sites and methods that would be likely to survive a pre-emptive US strike could they guarantee the US would pay directly for such a move. I daresay they had that capability in place well before 1970.

Of course before then, the threat they posed to Europe was already a deterrent of sorts for American planners, since we couldn't afford to simply gamble with Western Europe much more than with US sites, not while trying to keep a strong alliance together anyway. But that was not a minimal deterrent because it still relied on a combination of Soviet aircraft getting through and early-generation missiles vulnerable to pre-emptive strikes, so they had to be deployed in larger numbers than they expected to actually strike home, to allow for very large attrition rates.

The problem here is, both superpowers need to build up forces far greater than minimal deterrent levels, because in the early days defenses would still be somewhat effective, and vulnerability to enemy first strikes still very high. So numbers versus numbers have some meaning. Indeed they still do, though nowadays with hardened or hidden launchers, it is much harder for the enemy to stomp it all down pre-emptively, and approaches certainty some very nasty retaliatory capability survives. But under modern conditions it is much more reasonable to mutually negotiate a build-down, because the difference between minimal deterrent and the sort of forces one needs to sustain a first strike against a minimal deterrent is very great; it is easy to see the difference and probably feasible to catch a treaty signatory in the act of violating it. Now the problem is political; how to justify to domestic constituencies who have previously been sold on the need for massive forces and often have become economically as well as emotionally committed to them, that on the basis of a treaty we've signed with the folks who yesterday were bloodthirsty ogres bound and determined to nuke us till our grandchildren glowed, we're suddenly gonna trust them and they're gonna trust us. Also, there are generally third parties in the world who aren't signatories yet, what about them?

So I'm afraid the doctrine of minimal deterrence--which quite possibly is exactly what Khrushchev had in mind, precisely to free up resources for economic development--wouldn't be attainable for the Soviets until late in the '60s, and meanwhile both they and the Americans would already have--did, OTL--gone on a binge of buildup that neither side would want to immediately discard just a half decade later. By the time it was politically feasible, the USSR was tottering on edge of collapse.
 
Hold on, didn't China to minimal deterrence? The whole reason I suggested this was because Maoist China ended up following that strategy despite the issues it had.

With that in mind, my idea is that a reformer comes to power in the 1970s somehow, and decides to take advantage of the US's cultural issues at the time to transition the Soviet Union into some sort of,"Peace Communism."
 
Hold on, didn't China to minimal deterrence? The whole reason I suggested this was because Maoist China ended up following that strategy despite the issues it had.
But was that because they chose it or because that was all that Maoist China could afford and was technically capable of carrying out at the time?
 
But was that because they chose it or because that was all that Maoist China could afford and was technically capable of carrying out at the time?

Perhaps, but the Soviets could easily justify a more laid back nuclear policy under that same latter excuse. After all, weren't they behind with things like ICBMs?
 
Hold on, didn't China to minimal deterrence? The whole reason I suggested this was because Maoist China ended up following that strategy despite the issues it had.

With that in mind, my idea is that a reformer comes to power in the 1970s somehow, and decides to take advantage of the US's cultural issues at the time to transition the Soviet Union into some sort of,"Peace Communism."

The Chinese made a virtue of necessity. They couldn't possibly match both Soviet and US build rates, they couldn't possibly develop a first strike capability against either, let alone both. So they built just enough to put either on notice it wouldn't get away with a unilateral strike without paying a steep price and let it go at that.

I don't know about you, but I was around in the US during the '70s. I was a minor to be sure, but as a nerd and a military brat I paid attention to this stuff. As a young adult in the '80s I became a belated hippie who would totally agree that the US could and should build down and back off, but the cultural setting I lived in in the '70s was a lot more hawkish than your impression of the decade allows for! To be sure the idea of detente was in the air, and the hawks often gave the impression they were carrying on a lonely Cassandra crusade against a bunch of half-baked peaceniks who would just open the doors to the first Soviet paratroops who came wafting down. But that wasn't really the case! I didn't live in places like New York City to be sure. But the places I did live in, mostly near US air bases in the Deep South, were skeptical of treaties with the Russians. Even living in Southern California as I did one year my Dad was on duty overseas, in South Korea, the parts of Los Angeles I lived in were hardly bastions of nuclear disarmament. Aside from my Dad I had an uncle in the Strategic Air Command; I had other relatives working for various big defense contractors. And while the majority of people I met in the streets of the parts of LA County bordering on Orange County in 1975 were not so deeply inducted into the infamous military-industrial complex, I guess, no one was thrilled by losing in Vietnam, nor was there overwhelming sentiment for winding down. I certainly never got the impression from the national media I was paying more and more attention to that it was a consensus we had too much military; such views were heard but they were always shown as marginal and "irresponsible."

Of course we actually did have the SALT Treaties, but the ink was hardly dry on them before quite a lot of American politicians with grim-faced generals standing behind them were ranting on prime-time news programs about the foolishness, indeed wickedness, of signing them.

Looking past the media frenzy and other fogs, it's fair to say the US governing establishment was coming around to the idea of living with the Soviets for the long term, and making and keeping treaties with them. But don't underestimate the forces of social inertia and economic interest I have mentioned, I saw them at work. I do believe the Reagan administration owed a lot to backlash against the very idea of accommodation, a backlash its hawkish wing (which in the early years, appeared equivalent to the whole thing) personified.

The point is, a Soviet onlooker, even one advised by very sophisticated analysis, could hardly get the impression the Americans all unanimously were for peace at any price, or in some cases peace at all. They could hope the more extreme, frothing-at-the-mouth rhetoric was just that, or the sincerely held but marginal and irrelevant crazed views of a lunatic fringe, but calls for a revival of the crusade against Godless Communism were certainly being made--and published in various media, all across the country. How much confidence could Brezhnev, or some alternative honcho of much firmer moral fiber, place in the basic goodwill of the USA? Our hawks gave points to their hawks; similar economic incentives (not optimal for the nation as whole, but vital to the large numbers of people already beholden to already bloated military logistics) operated on both sides. When the Soviets did develop capabilities to match the new ones we were constantly developing right through the '70s, that was further ammunition for American hawks to denounce the insincerity of Soviet intentions, and it went another round. In retrospect it's perfectly clear the Russians were always playing catch-up, but at the time I would read one alarmist article after another about how the Russians were stealing a march on us and we had to rally and catch up to them.

The arms race was alive and well on both sides, and the American side gave no clear, unambiguous sign that we were seriously going to let up. Too much pork, too deep an emotional investment in the idea of American supremacy as the sole guarantee of our survival, for a dovish move to have enough credibility for the Kremlin to bet their lives on it.

Reagan himself may have been the wild card that eventually let Gorbachev bet on it. He'd seen The Day After, the mid-80s dramatization of what a nuclear war would actually be like in the USA, and it shook him. He suddenly wanted assurance we weren't headed recklessly for an unnecessary Armageddon and he wasn't getting enough of it from his own hawks; that's when he suddenly turned to serious negotiations with the Soviets. But clearly the mid-to-late 80s was too late for the USSR.

No, if the Soviets were going to go over to a doctrine of minimal deterrence in the '70s, it could not be justified by saying, "look, the capitalists are calling uncle on this mad buildup, they are asking us for a mutual cool-off!" They'd have to boldly go ahead and take the chance that yesterday's adequate minimum deterrent would tomorrow be vulnerable to some expensive but effective development in the West. Like MIRVs for instance; the idea of putting lots of warheads in one missile was developed in the West first, partially justified of course by the "inevitability" the Soviets would soon have it (if not already) and they upset the balance of power, because now one missile could strike at many silos or bases; vice versa the cost of losing one MIRVed missile was that much higher. They'd have to keep on top of such Western developments, in the absence of credible treaties (and OTL, American politicians never tired of saying a treaty with the Kremlin was worthless, so how much trust could the Russians place in our assurances?) they'd have to counter new American capabilities to decimate their minimal deterrent, probably by multiplying it. Every time they did, it would be touted as further evidence of sinister Russian intentions.

Actually even at their feverish peak, the US and Soviet strategic nuclear arsenals were only a small fraction of the total cost of each year's military budget. The big savings would come in if both sides could agree to build down their non-nuclear, non-strategic forces. By the same token of their sheer economic costs, the political inertia alone, not to mention that both sides foresaw a real and ongoing need to actually use all this firepower, was against such a savings.

I do think the Russians, and still more the USA, could have afforded to take the risks involved in unilaterally downsizing and redefining the purpose of their massive strategic nuclear forces in the 1970s. Unfortunately neither side saw the compelling need--the Brezhnev years, though obviously in retrospect built on sand, were years when ordinary Soviet citizens saw themselves as being better off than ever before and that the regime's long-uttered promises of progress and security might not be so empty after all. Or so I've read anyway.
 
Well, here's why I suggest the 70s.

Was the anti-communist rhetoric there? Of course. But, so was war weariness. That doesn't mean the US tolerates the Communists, but rather that the US public isn't going to tolerate another intervention anytime soon. The US had just been through Vietnam, and because of that, will have to do some soul searching.

Now, for conventional arms, here's my thought. The whole argument for what would LEAD UP to minimum deterrence would be this. Conventional arms are basically worthless, because of strategic nuclear weapons. The idea is that they decide it isn't worth it to pursue tactical nuclear bombs, or having a ridiculous conventional advantage.

The latter could be justified through saying that two superpowers will never directly battle each other after WW2, which very arguably is true because of nuclear weapons. While they'll still need conventional arms to keep in line the satellite states, that isn't nearly as large, or costly as what they had in OTL.

The former would be justified through similar means. What's the point of having tactical nuclear weapons if you aren't going to be engaging an enemy's military, but only strategic targets?

The idea is that the Soviets choose to emphasize strategic nuclear weapons for some reason. This, over time, leads them to minimum deterrence, as with strategic nuclear weapons, one might as well just insure it would be too costly to go to war with the USSR.

Now, how would they get to this reasoning? I don't know, but that's why I suggested a reformer in the 70s, one that would be opposed to Hawks. One of the problems with the Soviets during the 70s is... basically going back to Stalin's era in many ways, when they should've taken the US's war weariness as a chance to reform, and pursue something like minimum deterrence.

Keep in mind, this reformer doesn't have to be like Gorbachav. Monsters such as Beria even wanted reform, because they were brutally pragmatic. So, if you had a brutally pragmatic figure, perhaps one could get things like this.
 
The problem with a stand-down of conventional forces was that the US had a fixation on penning the Soviets up in a small sphere of influence, while the Soviets were (justly, given their previous history) afraid of encirclement by the West. In order for either side to have their way, they need a conventional military to enforce their will on states that haven't picked a side yet. If your military force is devoted primarily to strategic nuclear bombs, you basically have two settings--Peace and Thermonuclear Annihilation. That's why, in the US, JFK stepped back from the Eisenhower Administration's focus on strategic arms and built up the conventional forces.

Unless one finds a way to prevent the build-up of conventional forces in Europe, massive conventional forces will remain. Neither side wants to be the first to stand down (no guarantee the other will follow suit), and each wants to have a stronger force.
 
The problem with a stand-down of conventional forces was that the US had a fixation on penning the Soviets up in a small sphere of influence, while the Soviets were (justly, given their previous history) afraid of encirclement by the West. In order for either side to have their way, they need a conventional military to enforce their will on states that haven't picked a side yet. If your military force is devoted primarily to strategic nuclear bombs, you basically have two settings--Peace and Thermonuclear Annihilation. That's why, in the US, JFK stepped back from the Eisenhower Administration's focus on strategic arms and built up the conventional forces.

Unless one finds a way to prevent the build-up of conventional forces in Europe, massive conventional forces will remain. Neither side wants to be the first to stand down (no guarantee the other will follow suit), and each wants to have a stronger force.

But to what purpose? Conventional troops are kind of useless when you possess weapons that could potentially destroy civilization(not likely, but potentially, and as far as we know.) Again, if either side starts a conventional war directly with the other, the nuclear option will be used. The Soviets can defend themselves better from encirclement by utilizing strategic nuclear weapons than with conventional forces.

The first could be justified by deciding that through psychology.

As for conflicts against smaller countries, as Vietnam showed, WW2 style massive militaries just... aren't what the future is about. Therefore, standing armies should be smaller, and focused much more on things like Spetnaz for the Soviets than tanks. (Not saying they won't have tanks, just not as much focus on them.)
 
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