Conclusion: The Kremlin’s Missile Defence Policy during the Cold War and Beyond

Abstract

The remarkable endurance of Moscow’s interest in developing and deploying a missile defence system can be attributed to a combination of factors, the most important of which were the military’s need to find a means of protection against nuclear missile strikes to ensure the country’s survival and even ‘victory’ in any future major war, and the desire of successive political leaderships to use the country’s ABM capability to influence the policies of other governments, especially that of the United States. Missile defence policy was consistently used by the leaders of the Soviet Union and Russia in attempts to put pressure on Western states and to resist political pressure exerted on it by Washington. This pattern was established by Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, when he set about using the Soviets’ apparent successes in ABM technology as one component in his strategy of bluff and misperception to convince Western countries of the USSR’s impressive military capability and to intimidate them into making concessions on political issues. Brezhnev and Kosygin carried on this tradition when they used the Soviet missile defence capability as a bargaining chip before and during the SALT I negotiations, ultimately giving up the opportunity to deploy an effective national defence in exchange for limitations on the Americans’ offensive and defensive weapons and, perhaps more importantly, for the anticipated benefits of détente.