War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Vitaliy Vladimirovich Zhurkin, 1986
Description:
Vitaliy Zhurkin was a Soviet foreign policy expert who served as Deputy Director of the Institute of the USA and Canada starting in 1971 and as Director of the Institute of Europe at the Academy of Sciences starting in 1987. He was a consultant to the Soviet delegations at the 1979 Vienna summit, the 1985 Geneva summit and the 1986 Reykjavik summit. Here he offers his own, as well as broader Soviet, views on a range of nuclear-related issues. Beginning with the notion of offensive and defensive strategies, he notes that the latter has evolved to a point that it is now seen as dangerous in its own right. He does not agree that the USSR was primarily concerned with the defensive aspects of the SALT I treaty, and goes on to discuss perceptions of how each side approached those negotiations. He notes the significant U.S. geographical advantage over the USSR, and comments on several specific points -- including the significance of the term "strategic weapon," and the status of SLBMs and MIRVs, calling the latter the most destabilizing development of the 1970s. The conversation turns to Soviet perceptions of the development of the arms race. In his view, the typical dynamic is that the United States is the first to develop a new weapon or other technological improvement, such as MIRVs or cruise missiles, and continues to test or deploy at will, then objects when the Soviets finally do the same. He believes the same will happen with SDI. He denies that this process of U.S.-Soviet action-reaction reversed itself in the mid-1960s. He is sharply negative about the "Schlesinger Doctrine," Jimmy Carter's PD-59 and Ronald Reagan's NSDD-13 because all incorporate the "impossible" concept of a limited nuclear war.
