Strategic assessments reveal a given nation’s understanding of the security landscape and its relative power position. However, strategic appraisals can also betray the fundamental values and prevailing attitudes of the country generating the assessment. American estimators have shown a propensity to frame questions in a manner reflecting their internal predispositions—a tendency that has often contributed to flawed images of external threats. This was the case during the early Cold War when American analysts routinely transferred judgment to Soviet decision-makers. By projecting their own proclivities onto an adversary whose preferences did not align with the United States, analysts persistently misdiagnosed the threat and concealed opportunities to exploit Soviet vulnerabilities. It was not until American strategic analysis underwent a dramatic transformation in the 1970s that more reliable assessments began to emerge. The Cold War, then, offers a stark warning about the pitfalls of an ethnocentric view of the security landscape. Adversaries, after all, are bounded by distinctive national styles that diverge from American logic.
Early Cold War Strategic Assessments
Throughout the 1950s, estimators employed misguided assumptions that inflated forecasts of the Soviet strategic nuclear posture.[1] Analysts, by transposing preferences and economic-technological capabilities onto the adversary, mirror-imaged the threat. In this way, estimators presumed the Soviet Union, despite its inexperience with long-range bombardment, would follow the American lead and field a sizeable fleet of intercontinental bombers. The feared bomber gap never materialized and was followed by the markedly more ominous, yet equally nonexistent, missile gap. In 1955, estimators forecasted a terrifying Soviet strike force of nearly 800 heavy bombers by 1960.[2] It was widely believed that, unless the B-52 entered accelerated production, current defense planning would expose the continental United States to a disarming first strike. Projections of the long-range missile threat aroused similar fears, as the 1957 estimate forecast a posture of 1,000 delivery vehicles by mid-1961.[3] Nonetheless, the emergence of overhead reconnaissance platforms gradually exposed these miscalculations, unveiling a small and primitive Soviet posture.[4] A vast gap certainly marked the strategic nuclear balance—just one shaped by overwhelming American primacy.
The bomber gap, if analysts had shown greater willingness to question assumptions, might have illuminated the limits of Soviet missile production.
Despite the initial limits of overhead reconnaissance, the inflated assessments were the result of fundamental analytical shortcomings. Estimators, by failing to reassess assumptions, mirror-imaged the economic-technological capacity of Soviet industry. “The American analogue,” as Sir Lawrence Freedman demonstrated, “was often used to resolve areas of ambiguity.” Predictions that the Kremlin would ramp up annual missile production to 500 delivery vehicles rested on extrapolations of U.S. economic capacity. Such estimates, however, rested on “no justification in either available evidence or previous experience.”[5] The bomber gap, if analysts had shown greater willingness to question assumptions, might have illuminated the limits of Soviet missile production. Consequently, the weak Soviet economic base shaped the Kremlin’s conclusion that a modest force of 200 intercontinental ballistic missiles was a viable deterrent in the early 1960s.[6]
The sclerotic Soviet command economy, though, was just one factor conditioning Kremlin decision-making. More deeply-rooted factors were at play, as the superpowers perceived the deterrence balance from strikingly different vantage points. According to the strategic theorist Colin S. Gray, Soviet strategists were “heirs to distinctive perspectives that are, at root, comprehensible through an appropriate combination of historical, geographical, anthropological, psychological, and sociological study.”[7] Models of rational analysis underpinned by American logic could not produce reliable forecasts of Soviet action. While U.S. planners agonized over the presumed long-range threat, the Soviets initially concentrated on their near abroad. This disparity reflected the different historic and geographic circumstances of the superpowers. The German onslaught in June 1941, which left a searing psychological imprint on the Kremlin, intensified Russian collective memories of aggressions emanating from Central Europe.[8] Conditioned by historical legacies, the Kremlin feared that recapitalized German armies would be wedded to nuclear artillery. The Americans instead obsessed over a “nuclear Pearl Harbor.” Soviet and American officials, holding starkly different perceptions of the deterrence balance, struggled to sort out the basic issues of arms control. In exploratory talks during the mid-1950s, the Soviets concentrated on “a new, possibly more lethal, Operation Barbarossa”—this time supported by battlefield nuclear munitions.[9] During the early Cold War, Soviet planners hardly shared the American interest in holding the adversary’s homeland at risk. This reflected the different outlooks of the United States, a maritime power comfortable with power projection, and the Soviet Union, a land power with more parochial interests.[10] Decision-makers, then, were conditioned by what Gray defined as “national styles.”[11]
The Kremlin’s totalitarian techniques, which prioritized regime survival above all else, kept strike forces at low levels of readiness unlike the Americans.
The strategic nuclear balance thus embodied the striking perceptual contrasts between the superpowers. The U.S. Strategic Air Command dwarfed its Soviet counterpart throughout the Cold War, as Russia lacked a comparable tradition of long-range aviation. Similarly, the American strategic offensive missile posture enjoyed a commanding position through the mid-1960s. Prior to the creation of the Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF) in 1960, Soviet offensive missiles fell under the command of the Ground Forces, which had no interest in the intercontinental strike mission. Notwithstanding the mirror-imaging of American analysts, the Soviet Navy’s defensive orientation reflected the geographic circumstances of a land power by remaining weak and of secondary concern to planners.[12] American officials surveying the primitive Soviet strategic posture in the early 1960s were thus “highly confident” U.S. forces could execute a disarming first strike.[13] The Kremlin’s totalitarian techniques, which prioritized regime survival above all else, kept strike forces at low levels of readiness unlike the Americans. Diverging further from U.S. logic, Soviet planners unilaterally steered enormous resources into integrated air defenses, starving strategic offensive forces of scarce resources. Astonishingly, and in stark contrast to its superpower rival, the Kremlin from 1945 to the early 1960s spent more on integrated defenses than strategic offensive forces.[14] A secure second-strike posture, one capable of absorbing a large-scale surprise attack, thus eluded the Kremlin until at least the mid-1960s.
McNamara’s Strategic Narcissism
Throughout the 1960s, Soviet behavior continued to defy the assumptions of American planners. Robert S. McNamara’s approach to nuclear strategy underscores the pitfalls of nuclear ethnocentrism.[15] Revealing his strategic narcissism, the Secretary of Defense assumed that U.S. force planning in the 1950s drove Soviet decision-making and had fueled an “action-reaction phenomenon.” McNamara believed that, if the United States pursued an illusory strategic edge, the Soviets would simply parry American initiatives with astute countermoves. He imagined an agile opponent capable of transcending economic constraints and the long lead times of developing weapons systems. Based on this image of a spiralling arms race, he suggested that U.S. restraint might induce the Kremlin to forgo competition and embrace strategic stability.[16] Mutual Assured Destruction—the idea that survivable postures had generated an inescapable nuclear stalemate—could dissuade both superpowers from pursuing nuclear superiority. By refraining from destabilizing offensive and defensive deployments, action-reaction duels might be avoided. Arms racing, then, became the overwhelming threat—and, consequently, stability was the singular objective. Influenced by Western theories of modernization, McNamara hoped the Kremlin would forgo a muscular arms buildup to pursue consumer growth and liberalization.[17] The intellectual heft of American strategic thought might convince the Kremlin to emulate the U.S. posture—a strategic convergence of sorts cementing stability.
Amassing enormous missiles to deliver large payloads, the Soviet long-range posture by the early 1970s vastly outweighed the lighter and numerically inferior U.S. strike force.
Soviet leaders ignored McNamara’s strategic tutelage. According to a Soviet nuclear war planner, the Kremlin “strove to achieve superiority…a natural process caused by political factors in the world.”[18] Moscow, rejecting the image of an inescapable nuclear stalemate, believed technological advances could upend the deterrence balance.[19] As U.S. strategic forces levelled off in the late 1960s, the Kremlin bolted ahead with single-minded determination. Soviet planners, favoring a balanced mix of offensive and defensive systems, designed a distinctive posture for nuclear warfighting and regime survival. Amassing enormous missiles to deliver large payloads, the Soviet long-range posture by the early 1970s vastly outweighed the lighter and numerically inferior U.S. strike force. The Soviet strategic defensive posture also dwarfed its American counterpart, largely because American planners viewed these systems as destabilizing and strategically worthless.
Schlesinger’s Strategic Empathy
In the late 1960s, a group of frustrated strategists at the RAND Corporation formulated a new analytic practice emphasizing distinctive national styles. Pioneers like future Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger replaced the image of a spiralling arms race with that of a slower arms interaction.[20] The dynamics of the Soviet-American competition were more subtle and less mechanistic, shaped by external and internal stimuli. Schlesinger characterized the action-reaction model as a “half-baked” hypothesis overlooking fundamental “considerations of bureaucratic or economic feasibility.” Soviet planners at times responded to American behaviour, but their reactions were conditioned by organizational structures. Schlesinger rightly believed that entrenched bureaucratic interests and budgetary constraints limited the options available to Soviet decision-makers. “It is these key ingredients,” he wrote in 1968, “that explain the slowness of arms responses, the lost opportunities, and the perseverance of vulnerabilities.”[21] Graham Allison, then a doctoral candidate working with RAND on an organizational process model of decision-making, attributed the Soviets’ early nuclear inferiority to the Ground Forces’ dominant position within the defense establishment. Until the Strategic Rocket Forces displaced the Red Army in 1960, the offensive missile posture was constrained by the parochialism of land power.[22]
Schlesinger argued that the United States should exploit opportunities generated by Soviet organizational processes. Due to entrenched bureaucratic interests, Soviet responses to American initiatives were slow and suboptimal, leaving space to develop a strategic edge. Stability thus constituted just one goal among many. According to his close colleague Andrew W. Marshall, “Schlesinger arrived at RAND with the idea that the object was outlasting the Soviets and encouraging them to devote resources to activities that were less threatening or even favorable to the United States.”[23] Refining Schlesinger’s notion of long-term cost imposition after the late 1960s, Marshall posited that high-accuracy missiles with “hard-target kill capability may force expensive [defensive] countermeasures” on the Soviets.[24] Both analysts championed precision-guided weapons systems as instruments to exact staggering peacetime costs. If confronted by an array of formidable U.S. power-projection capabilities, Soviet planners might act on historic fears by steering scarce resources away from offensive weaponry and toward ineffectual defenses.
The Soviets, in a futile attempt to allay historic fears, responded by feeding their entrenched bureaucratic interests, plowing even greater resources into air defenses.
After Schlesinger became defense secretary in 1973, the strategic asymmetries generated by contrasting national styles were rigorously examined for the first time. Marshall was named the first director of the Office of Net Assessment, and his estimates gradually identified areas of comparative U.S. advantage. By the early 1980s, diagnostic net assessments had unveiled what McNamara’s approach had either downplayed or missed altogether.[25] Highly accurate weapons systems and an aggressive naval strategy were now exploiting asymmetric Soviet vulnerabilities. The Soviets, in a futile attempt to allay historic fears, responded by feeding their entrenched bureaucratic interests, plowing even greater resources into air defenses. Throughout the Cold War, the Kremlin refused to allow these investments to fall below 15% of military spending, which forced an 8% increase in annual defense budgets for the early 1980s.[26] This preference had long deprived the Soviet Navy of the power-projection capabilities needed to beat back the forward-deployed posture of the U.S. Maritime Strategy.[27] Ultimately, the Reagan administration leveraged competitive strategies to lock in American military primacy in the final years of the superpower rivalry.
Preparing for Long-Term Competition
Despite the transformation of U.S. strategic analysis in the late Cold War period, the triumphalism that followed the Soviet collapse marked the return of an ethnocentric American approach. Western social-scientific theories, much like the modernist assumptions which shaped McNamara’s thinking, underpinned expectations that China would forgo competition and become a responsible stakeholder in the U.S.-led global order.[28] Notwithstanding the aspirations of the George W. Bush administration, the formidable U.S. strategic arsenal failed “to dissuade the emergence of potential or would-be peer competitors by underscoring the futility of trying to sprint toward parity.”[29] Beijing—like Moscow before it—instead chose to pursue its distinctive national ambitions and embarked on a robust nuclear modernization program.[30] China’s leadership, emboldened by its ongoing strategic arms buildup, has subsequently ramped up its belligerence in the Western Pacific, leveraging new long-range strike capabilities to weaken the American extended deterrent.
With the return of intensive great-power competition, the Cold War experience should encourage what the historian Zachary Shore refers to as strategic empathy, or “the skill of understanding what drives and constrains one’s adversary.”[31] Chinese strategists, impressed by the high-tech destruction of the Iraqi army in 1991, have themselves exhaustively studied the American way of war–with one leading official admitting that “Our great hero was Andy Marshall.”[32] Moving forward, the United States must make a similar intellectual investment to appreciate the distinctive behavioral propensities of its opponents. The insights of pioneering strategists like Schlesinger and Marshall can help the U.S analytic community jettison its narcissistic tendencies and regenerate strategic empathy. In light of China’s concerted efforts to diagnose U.S. behavior, disavowing their contributions risks ceding a strategic edge in the extended competition ahead.
Kyle Balzer is an America in the World Consortium postdoctoral fellow at the Clements Center for National Security, University of Texas at Austin. He recently earned a doctorate from Ohio University, where he studied diplomatic and military history. Currently, Kyle is working on a manuscript titled The Revivalists: James R. Schlesinger, the Nuclear Warfighting Strategists, and Competitive Strategies for Great-Power Rivalry.
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Header Image: Plumbbob Wilson, Nevada Test Site, June 18, 1957 (National Nuclear Security Administration).
Notes:
[1] James R. Schlesinger (Director of Central Intelligence, 1973, and Secretary of Defense, 1973-1975), Andrew W. Marshall (Director of the Office of Net Assessment, 1973-2015), and Fritz W. Ermarth (CIA and NSC strategic analyst) offered the sharpest critiques of early Cold War strategic analysis. See Schlesinger, "Address by Former DCI," in Watching the Bear: Essays on CIA's Analysis of the Soviet Union, eds. Gerald K. Haines and Robert E. Leggett (Central Intelligence Agency, 2003), 253-260; Marshall, "Arms Competitions: The Status of Analysis," in Soviet Power and Western Negotiating Policies, Vol. II: The Western Panacea, Constraining Soviet Power Through Negotiation (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1983), 3-11; and Ermarth, "Contrasts in American and Soviet Strategic Thought," International Security, vol. 3, no. 2 (Fall 1978): 138-155.
[2] Lawrence Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 66-67 and John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Soviet Military Strength (New York: The Dial Press, 1982), 38-50.
[3] For the missile gaps, see Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), chapter 4 and John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Soviet Military Strength (New York: The Dial Press, 1982), chapters 4 and 8.
[4] Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974 (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1992), 111-112 and National Reconnaissance Office, The Corona Story (Chantilly, VA: Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance, 2013), 59-61, 126.
[5] Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, 78
[6] Steven J. Zaloga, The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces, 1945-2000 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2002), 60-61.
[7] Colin S. Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Style (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Press, 1986), 33.
[8] Reina Pennington, “Military Culture, Military Efficiency, and the Red Army, 1917-1945,” in The Culture of Military Organizations, eds. Peter R. Mansoor and Williamson Murray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 226-246 and Tsypkin, “Soviet Military Culture and the Legacy of the Second World War,” in Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe, eds. Frank Bless and Robert G. Moeller (New York: Bergahn Books, 2010), 269-286.
[9] Jeremi Suri, “America’s Search for a Technological Solution to the Arms Race: The Surprise Attack Conference of 1958 and a Challenge for ‘Eisenhower Revisionists,’” Diplomatic History, vol. 21, no. 3, 439-443.
[10] For the influence of geography and historical experience on strategic culture, see Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 5.
[11] Colin S. Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Style (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Press, 1986).
[12] For the Soviets’ comparatively weaker power-projection capabilities, see Norman Polmar, Thomas A. Brooks, and George E. Federoff, Admiral Gorshkov: The Man Who Challenged the U.S. Navy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2019). For the expectations of American naval analysts, see Christopher A. Ford and David A. Rosenherg, “The Naval Intelligence Underpinnings of Reagan’s Maritime Strategy,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 28, no. 2 (April 2005): 381-382 and John B. Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy (Newport, RI: Naval War College), 23-24.
[13] Marc Tratchenberg, David Rosenberg, and Stephen Van Evera, An Interview with Carl Kaysen, MIT Security Studies Program, 8-11.
[14] Zaloga, The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword, 18.
[15] I have drawn the concept of “strategic narcissism” from H. R. McMaster, who was influenced by political scientist Hans Morgenthau and historian Zachary Shore. See McMaster, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World (New York: Harper, 2020), 9-17; Hans Morgenthau and Ethel Person, “The Roots of Narcissism,” Partisan Review 45, no. 3 (Summer 1978): 337-347; and Zachary Shore, Zachary Shore, A Sense of the Adversary: The High-Stakes History of Reading Your Rival’s Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014),
[16] Robert S. McNamara, "The Dynamics of Nuclear Strategy," speech delivered 18 September 1967, reprinted in The Department of State Bulletin, LVII, no. 1475 (9 October 1967): 443-451.
[17] James Cameron, The Double Game: The Demise of America’s First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 62-66, 97-98.
[18] Gen.-Col. Andrian A. Danilevich interview, Soviet Intentions, 1965-1985; Vol. II: Soviet Post-Cold War Testimonial Evidence, eds. John G. Hines, Ellis M. Mishulovich, and John F. Shull (McLean, VA: The BDM Corporation, 1995), 33.
[19] Danilevich interview, Soviet Intentions, 1965-1985; Vol. II, 30.
[20] At the RAND Corporation, Schlesinger’s coterie included perceptive analysts like Fritz Ermarth who acknowledged the distinctive national style of the Soviet Union. For Ermarth’s seminal work on the subject, see "Contrasts in American and Soviet Strategic Thought," International Security, 3, no. 2 (Fall 1978): 138-155.
[21] James R. Schlesinger, “Arms Interaction and Arms Control,” Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, P-3881, 1967, 1-2. As of 25 October 2022: https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3881.html.
[22] Graham Allison, “Remembering Andy,” in Remembering Andy Marshall: Essays by His Friends, (USA: Andrew Marshall Memorial Foundation, 2021), 99-100.
[23] Andrew W. Marshall, “The Origins of Net Assessment,” in Net Assessment and Military Strategy: Retrospective and Prospective Essays, ed. Thomas G. Mahnken (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2020), 7.
[24] A. W. Marshall, Long-Term Competition with the Soviets: A Framework for Strategic Analysis, April 1972, R-862-PR, RAND Corporation, ix.
[25] For the establishment and maturation of the Office of Net Assessment, see Andrew Krepinevich and Barry Watts, The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy (New York: Basic Books, 2015).
[26] Westwick, Stealth, 4-5, 194, 234. For the PVO-Strany in the early Cold War, see Dmitry Adamsky, “The Art of Net Assessment and Uncovering Foreign Military Innovations: Learning from Andrew W. Marshall’s Legacy,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 43, no. 5 (2020): 611-644.
[27] For the Maritime Strategy, see Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, chs. 3-5; John E. Lehman, Command of the Seas (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2001); Steven T. Wills, Strategy Shelved: The Collapse of Cold War Naval Strategic Planning (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2021) chs. 2-3. .
[28] Aaron L. Friedberg, Getting China Wrong (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2022).
[29] Donald H. Rumsfeld, testimony, U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, The National Security Implications of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, hearings, 107th Cong., 2d sess., July-August 2002, 11.
[30] For the Chinese strategic nuclear posture, see James M. Smith and Paul J. Bolt, Chinas Strategic Arsenal: Worldview, Doctrine, and Systems (Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2021).
[31] Zachary Shore, A Sense of the Adversary: The High-Stakes History of Reading Your Rival’s Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 258.
[32] “The Dragon’s New Teeth: China’s Military,” The Economist, 403, no. 8779 (7 April 2012) 27-32.