Eastern Europe and Soviet Coalitional Warfare: Dilemmas of Analysis.
Abstract
Soviet strategists believe that whether a future war is limited or all-nuclear, short or protracted, it will be fought in the European theater or on a global scale by opposing coalitions of states. Yet, at present, Soviet military theoreticians address coalitional warfare in the new context of theater conventional operations and strategic coordination. The author examines: Western scholarship on Soviet/East European military relations. She identifies some flaws and failures in the study of coalitional warfare: 1) Western scholars, while ignoring substantative issues for which there is an abundance of untapped evidence, have paid too much attention to questions (e.g., political reliability) that cannot be answered through an empirical investigation; 2) little effort has been devoted to the systematic study of published East European military materials and the data on military experiences of emigres from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania; and 3) academic scholars have tended to study the Warsaw Pack as a political institution rather than examine the complexities of Soviet/East European relations broadly conceived. She recommends that independent researchers pay attention to military aspects of Soviet-East European relations, namely, defense economy, military history, strategic thinking, operations and tactics, i.e., the areas carefully studied by military scholars in the Eastern bloc. Keywords: Foreign military forces; Military strategy; Joint military operations; Combat effectiveness.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1987
- Accession Number
- ADA194147
Entities
People
- Natalie Gross