War Scarerussia & America

Pry, a former CIA military analyst and now a staff member of the House National Security Committee, presents a hair-raising picture of the Soviet Union and of today's Russian Republic, where, since the 1980s, policies toward the U.S. have been shaped by the fear of a surprise nuclear attack. This concern dominated the Soviet general staff throughout the 1980s and has been aggravated by Russia's decline, Pry argues. Whatever the statements and intentions of the civilian leadership, the general staff today remains in the hands of unreconstructed Marxist-Leninist ideologues who are also ardent patriots--and they control Russia's still-formidable nuclear arsenal. Specifying that he uses unclassified and declassified material only, Pry describes a half-dozen recent incidents that inspired Kremlin discussion of using nuclear threats, or at least nuclear diplomacy, to compensate for diminished conventional military capacities. Most of these incidents involved the ""near abroad,"" especially Ukraine and the Caucasus, or arose from internal conflicts like the coup attempts in 1991 and 1993. They nevertheless highlight Russia's instability at the highest levels of policy formation and implementation. Pry speculates as to what American reactions might be were the international situation reversed. Yet his argument that the risks of a Russian first strike are greater now than during the Cold War seems extreme. His conclusion that current U.S. approaches to Russia are based more on hope than reality nevertheless merits more serious consideration than the author feels it is likely to receive in Clinton's second administration. Major ad/promo. (Apr.)