Strategy in the Decade of the 1980s

An important element in recent European criticism of U.S. foreign policy is the claim that neither the Administration nor its critics has presented a coherent strategy for the decade of the 1980s. Responsible Europeans suggest that American statements on foreign policy have stressed the value of good personal relations, the importance of goodwill, and the desirability of shared aims, but have offered little in the way of practical guidelines as to how we should deal with the growing power of the Soviet Union. These critics ascribe the erratic nature of U.S. policy to the lack of a sound strategic concept. They are not, however, much happier on this score with the Administration's domestic critics than with the Administration.

It is timely, therefore, to outline an approach to a more coherent Western strategy. By way of introduction, I offer some comments on basic concepts, on the evolution of the correlation of forces, and on Soviet strategy.

II

Clausewitz uses the word "strategy" to describe an approach to war which links the outcomes of a number of military engagements in space and in time. Its object is to achieve a favorable overall position in which your opponent has no remaining courses of action open to him reasonably likely to reverse the course of the war. He must, therefore, accommodate to your side's political will.

Since Clausewitz's time, much thought has gone into expanding his concept into something broader than military strategy, often called "grand strategy," in which all factors bearing on the evolving situation-including economic, political and psychological factors as well as military-are taken into account over long periods of time, including times both of peace and of war. The Soviet leaders are careful students of Clausewitz and his successors and pay much attention to questions of doctrine, policy, strategy and tactics. Doctrine includes principles that are virtually unchanging over time, such as the primacy of the Communist Party over the state, the high importance of maintaining the security of the Soviet Union as the base of the Soviet Communist Party's power, the historical inevitability of progress toward world communism, and the Party's duty to assist that progress by exploiting class tensions and the tensions resulting from colonialism.