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Why the U.S.S.R. produces so many guns at the expense of so much butter is a matter of heated debate. The dean of American Kremlin-watchers, George Kennan, attributes the Soviet accumulation of military firepower to a deep-seated insecurity "flowing from Russia's relative weakness and vulnerability." Richard Pipes, the hard-line anti-Soviet historian from Harvard who now serves as a specialist on Communist affairs for the National Security Council staff, stresses offensive over the defensive drives. "Militarism," he says, "is as central to Soviet Communism as the pursuit of profit is to capitalist societies," and this militarism has mixed with what he calls "Russia's traditional expansionism."
Nationalism in Disguise
While Kennan advocates detente and Pipes favors a more confrontational policy, their views on the motivation of Soviet militarism are not entirely incompatible. Both would agree that the U.S.S.R. is the world's ultimate national security state.
The Soviets, like most paranoids, have real enemies, notably the Chinese, but in many respects the Americans as well. Reagan's boast that the last chapter of Communism is now being written and that the West will "transcend" its Soviet rival must have sounded to listeners in Moscow every bit as threatening as Nikita Khrushchev's famous vow 25 years ago, "We will bury you," sounded to American ears.
The quest for security can be aggressive, especially when it involves the hot pursuit of some enemies, the pre-emption of others, subjugation or subversion of still others. In a world full of dangers—real, imagined or exaggerated—the Soviet leadership dangers—real, imagined or exaggerated—the Soviet leadership would prefer to protect its gains with minimum risk of war by means of diplomacy, intimidation, propaganda, covert action, or the use of proxies. If necessary, though, it will resort to direct military intervention to ensure the survival of the Soviet system, including in those countries where the system has been imposed by outright conquest—such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia and, possibly next, Poland. On Christmas Day two years ago, the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan to prop up a faltering Marxist regime and has been there ever since.
Even when Soviet force is not on the move, the existence of so gargantuan a military machine threatens other states. It emboldens zealots within the Politburo who might be tempted to use this prowess, as well as pro-Soviet forces abroad who might hope that Moscow's leaders will aid or rescue their own bids for power.
Communism is serious competition for other social and economic systems in large measure because it is backed up by the threat of Soviet force. The leaders and citizens of other lands would not feel quite so haunted by the specter of Communism if they were not concerned about Soviet troops over the border, or missiles over the horizon, or secret stockpiles of Kalashnikov automatic rifles and cadres of KGB agents