Soviet reactions to shifts in U.S. and NATO military doctrine in Europe: The defense policy community and innovation

The author argues against the theory that military institutions resist doctrinal innovation, and that civilian intervention must overcome this resistance. Instead, she posits that military officers are inherently reactive to foreign military threats, including threatening doctrinal changes, and that these officers sometimes prefer to adopt "reactive innovations" in doctrine to counter those threats. The author treats defense experts as individual members of a policy community, rather than as mere representatives of institutional interests. While institutional interests may influence the policy positions of certain officers, they do not determine the preferences of all officers. She concludes that as the defense policy community changes or expands, either through military personnel turnover, or through the entrance of newly empowered civilian experts into the community, doctrinal innovations become easier; new members of the community are less likely to be wedded to the status quo.;The author claims that in the Gorbachev era, some civilian experts have influenced doctrinal reform within the Soviet military because the defense policy community has expanded to include them. A simple model of competition between military officers and academic civilians is therefore inadequate.;Three cases are examined: Soviet reactions to the Western adoption of the Flexible Response doctrin in the 1960s; to the American adoption of the Schlesinger Doctrine in 1974; and to the combination of the American adoption of the Air-Land Battle doctrine in 1982, and the NATO adoption of the Follow-on Forces Attack doctrine in 1984-1985.;To trace the development of Soviet thinking about doctrine, the author exhaustively reviews Russian-language Soviet journals (including some semi-classified military journals), and adds the findings of her conversations with Soviet academic experts on defense and with some retired Soviet military officers.