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The post-Stalin regimes faced many serious problems to solve in order to protect the balance of power with their adversaries. On the initiative of Khrushchev and the Politburo staff at the time, efforts to create a basis for grand strategy, policies, and decisions instigated discussions among the professional elite that ended up as the military doctrine. Contrary to Khrushchev’s idea of conventional disarmament in favor of strategic nuclear-missile technology, the military doctrine suggested constant readiness, military superiority both in quality and quantity, combined efforts of both new strategic and technological forces and conventional forces. The aim of this doctrine was to deter the West and avoid a world war, preempt an imminent attack with the first strike, and survive and assure victory in case deterrence and preemption fail and the war turns out to be protracted.⁷²

In the age of nuclear weapons, preparation for a nuclear war by achieving parity was acceptable; however, Khrushchev failed to sufficiently do so. According to Holloway, Brezhnev took over the Soviet Union in a strategically inferior position and made strenuous efforts to achieve strategic parity with the West.⁷³ Afterward, to defuse tension, Brezhnev signaled that the aim of the Soviet Union was not superiority.⁷⁴ While conducting SALT with the West to grant détente, Brezhnev changed the focal point of the military efforts to maintain limited national sovereignty and absolute Soviet control of the

71 Mark Galeotti, “Russia Is Punching Above Its Weight,” The Moscow Times, accessed March 4, 2016, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/russia-is-punching-above-its-weight/502810.html.

72 Sokolovskii, Soviet Military Strategy, 15–18.

73 Holloway, “Military Power and Political Purpose in Soviet Policy,” 16, 22.

74 Ibid., 22.

socialist bloc.⁷⁵ Until Brezhnev’s death, the main focus was to prevent a direct confrontation with the West, while consolidating power on its periphery. After Brezhnev died in 1982, doctrinal changes started to emerge, but the repercussions of the infamous Brezhnev Doctrine, which simply indicated that the Soviet Union would take precautions to maintain the Soviet bloc, lingered until late in the Gorbachev era. The “fraternal assistance” to nationalist movements, which started in the Khrushchev era, turned into military intervention to prevent revolutions, and succeeded.⁷⁶ However, the new strategy failed to satisfy realpolitik. The mass Soviet military presence backfired and failed to prevent the widespread reactionary movements to replace communist regimes with socialist democracies. The new inertia did not help Gorbachev restore power and the gradual contraction in the Soviet presence in Europe ended with the collapse of the communist bloc.

The post-Soviet Russian Federation created a balance of power with NATO after a stagnation during Yeltsin’s tenure. Russia has perpetuated the Soviet legacy of expanding Russian regional control and successfully prevented the West from meddling with its business. By using all its elements of national power in harmony, Putin’s Russia has tried to reinvigorate the communist bloc. With the transformation of the threat from nuclear weapons to terrorist networks, Russian countermeasures also evolved from necessary means to survive in nuclear warfare to all-inclusive combined covert efforts to succeed in hybrid warfare.

E. THE STRATEGIC UTILITY OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS IN RUSSIAN

PERSPECTIVE

The emphasis on multimillion-man armies in the Russian military discourse has recently shifted towards special operations, due to the changing threat perception and resources at hand. In theory, the strategic utility of special forces is mostly based on the strategy, task distribution, and capability of the units to achieve assigned tasks. Colin Gray argues that, “[t]he strategic value of special operations forces depends not just on

75 Ouimet, The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy, 2–4.

76 Ibid., 95.

how well or poorly they perform, but also on how important for the war as a whole are their assigned missions.”⁷⁷ That means, as a strategic instrument, the special forces need to succeed in their assigned missions and what they are asked to do should support an overall strategy to win. That said, the overall strategy remains most important and the various missions SOF would execute to support that strategy remains crucial.

The Soviets first sensed the need for special operations to prevent possible escalation of global conflicts while pursuing their goals. Khrushchev intended to maintain Soviet military support to “national liberation movements,” but to refrain from an escalation into a war between states.⁷⁸ He also aimed to prevent further nuclear proliferation.⁷⁹ As Sokolovskii suggests in Soviet Military Strategy,

By drawing this distinction, Khrushchev seemed to be saying that local war situations involving formal confrontation of Soviet and U.S. forces were dangerous and should be avoided, whereas national liberation struggles including guerrilla and proxy forces might be supported without undue risk.⁸⁰

The strategic path that would lead to political and military victory during the nuclear age entailed unconventional warfare that would avoid engagement in a mutually destructive nuclear confrontation. The Soviets, being aware of the power of covert actions, regarded anti-Soviet movements in the Soviet bloc as the work of foreign agents. In that respect, they used the argument of foreign involvement to justify their interference in their neighbors’ sovereignty. As Ouimet argues,

Convinced that the Prague Spring had been the work of foreign agents, Moscow undertook its own covert operation to subvert and destroy it….

Reliance on tanks and troops gave way to the use of “special forces” and the strategic application of ultimatums. All necessary means, legal or illegal, were employed to compromise the authority of the reformist government while strengthening its conservative opponents.⁸¹

77 Gray, Explorations in Strategy, 185.

78 Sokolovskii, Soviet Military Strategy, 48.

79 Ibid., 48, 282–83.

80 Ibid., 49.

81 Ouimet, The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy, 62.

Later in Afghanistan, the Soviets employed the Spetsnaz to successfully capture a critical target, namely the presidential palace, in the aftermath of the mass forces’ arrival as

“fraternal assistance.”⁸² The employment of the special forces, with the lack of a strategic scheme, did not result in achieving strategic outcomes in the long run.

In order to balance the expansion of capitalism by influencing foreign governments, the Soviets employed special operators as military advisors all around the world. Rather than direct confrontations with the West, they tasked the Spetsnaz to serve as advisors in many countries to propagate communist ideas as a shield against Western imperialism. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where the situation did not justify a Soviet invasion employing regular forces, as Holloway writes, “arms transfers and military advisers [were] used as major instruments of policy.”⁸³ This concept of operations, similar to foreign internal defense or train and equip programs, points out another use of Spetsnaz and the utility of the special operations in Russian statecraft.

The use of special operations to achieve strategic outcomes under Putin developed in a similar way with the operations in Czechoslovakia. First, Gerasimov and Putin put the blame on foreign agents for setting the stage for so-called “colored revolutions” and Arab spring, with the aim of changing the regime.⁸⁴ Then, they used the same methods in Crimea using SOF. Without causing any reaction by the West, the near-bloodless annexation of Crimea represents one of the most significant military successes and strategic gains in recent history.