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By Root 751 0

the mid-1970s a capabilities versus intentions debate about the Soviet Union took place in the United States, largely among policy makers and influential individuals outside of government, but involving the intelligence community as well. U.S. intelligence was fairly well informed about Soviet military capabilities, but not Soviet intentions. The question was whether these intentions mattered. U.S. officials engaged in long and sometimes heated debates about whether the Soviet Union planned to conduct large-scale offensive conventional operations preemptively or at the outset of a war with NATO; whether it could carry out such operations from a standing start—that is, with forces already deployed and supplied—without bringing up telltale reserves and additional supplies, thus with little or no warning; and whether the Soviet Union thought a nuclear conflict was winnable.

Those who believed that intentions mattered argued that simply keeping track of the number of military forces was not enough to gauge the threat they posed. Only intentions made it possible to gauge the true level of threat. For example, Britain has a substantial nuclear force but is of no concern to the United States because the two nations are close allies. By taking into account Soviet intentions, the United States would have a much clearer picture of the true nature of Soviet policy, which was central to U.S. and Western security concerns. Proponents of this view believed that the Soviet threat was being underestimated because intentions were not a factor in national estimates.

Those who were less concerned about intentions argued that if one were aware of a certain level of hostility and also knew the adversary’s capabilities, then knowing specific intentions was not that important. They argued that a worst case based on capabilities could serve as a planning yardstick. Finally, intentions (that is, plans) may be changed at will, making them a highly elusive target. Differences over the importance of intentions led to the Team A-Team B competitive analysis. The Team A-Team B exercise arose from concerns by members of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) during the latter part of the Ford administration (1974-1977) about Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimates of Soviet programs. PFIAB members felt that the estimates emphasized the weapons programs and not the geopolitical strategy behind them. They convinced Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Bush (1976-1977) to conduct a competitive analysis, with a group of outside experts (Team B) looking at the same intelligence as the government analysts (Team A). Such a competitive exercise had promise, but the results were undercut by the fact that Team B was made up entirely of hawks, experts who were highly suspicious of Soviet motives and of intelligence community analysis. Not surprisingly, Team B’s conclusions were much the same as the PFIAB concerns that prompted the study. The lack of balance in Team B diminished interest in doing this type of exercise in the future.

The track record for Soviet intentions is much less certain. The United States was never able to ascertain, for example, whether the Soviets subscribed to the nuclear doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD), which provided the basis for the size of U.S. strategic nuclear forces. The thinking behind MAD was that nuclear devastation was such an awe-some prospect that it made nuclear forces almost unusable, the two forces holding each other in check. The United States spent many negotiating rounds of the early strategic arms control talks proselytizing the Soviets on the importance of MAD. Did the Soviets agree at last or give lip service to the idea of MAD merely as a way to get on to negotiations? Did it matter? Similarly, did the Soviets think that nuclear war was winnable? Did they plan to invade Western Europe? Soviet doctrine certainly emphasized keeping war away from the homeland, but this is true of most nations’ doctrines.

Mirror imaging underlay some of the debate over Soviet intentions.