This book, first published in 1984, analyses the critically important Cold War issue of the Soviet national security decision-making process dealing with weapons acquisition, arms control and the application of military force. It conceptualises Soviet decision-making for national security from Stalinist antecedents to 1980s modes, and examines the problems of decision-making concerning weapons development, defence research and development and SALT negotiations. It also focuses on the decision-making processes which led to the use or threatened use of military force in Czechoslovakia (1968), the Middle East (1973) and Afghanistan (1979).

This book, first published in 1984, analyses the critically important Cold War issue of the Soviet national security decision-making process dealing with weapons acquisition, arms control and the application of military force. It conceptualises Soviet decision-making for national security from Stalinist antecedents to 1980s modes, and examines the problems of decision-making concerning weapons development, defence research and development and SALT negotiations. It also focuses on the decision-making processes which led to the use or threatened use of military force in Czechoslovakia (1968), the Middle East (1973) and Afghanistan (1979).

The turmoil in the Caribbean and Central America does not have a single cause; it results from both indigenous factors and outside intervention. Some liberals see revolution as the result of poverty and injustice and ignore the East-West security dimensions of the problem, the role of Leninist ideology, and the actions of the Soviet Union and its a

This book offers concepts of the Nicaraguan conflict and examines the interpretations of its origins. It discusses the evolution of Sandinista National Liberation Front ideological posture and structures and deals with Soviet, Cuban, and Western European perceptions and policies toward Nicaragua.

The issue of Nicaragua arouses political passions, those that we see expressed almost daily in the newspapers of Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Few issues are more divisive within the politics of certain countries, and the evolution of the Nicaraguan drama threatens to drive a wedge between countries that are friends, allies, and pa

The turmoil in the Caribbean and Central America does not have a single cause; it results from both indigenous factors and outside intervention. Some liberals see revolution as the result of poverty and injustice and ignore the East-West security dimensions of the problem, the role of Leninist ideology, and the actions of the Soviet Union and its allies. Some conservatives point to the evil machinations of the Kremlin and its proxies to explain revolution and ignore the economic, social, and political roots of discontent. In reality, however, causes of revolution are both internal and external. This volume is a collection from a conference at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California on August 15-18, 1984 and tells much more about Soviet/Cuban strategy and tactics in the Third World than was known before. It also provides a useful corollary to recommendations put forward by the Bipartisan Commission. For all of these reasons, this work should be read not only by scholars, but also by policymakers, analysts, and all discerning readers who care about America's role in the world. The purposes of the meeting were (1) to generate scholarly examination of documents captured during the U.S.fEast Caribbean forces' intervention in Grenada in October 1983, so as to determine the causes of the bloody coup in Grenada and the impact of the intervention on Soviet/Cuban politics in the Caribbean Basin and other areas of the Third World; and (2), to examine in bipartisan fashion U.S. options for countering Soviet/Cuban adventurism. Both objectives were met

In this new edition of his highly acclaimed work, Jiri Valenta adds his assessment of Soviet military decisionmaking in the 1980s to his earlier analysis of decisionmaking and crisis management in the Soviet bureaucracy and Warsaw Pact. Comparing the events of 1968 to the Kremlin's very different reaction to reforms now under way in Czechoslovakia and the rest of Eastern Europe, Valenta shows that Soviet politics were never simple. The USSR's foreign policy response to the "Prague Spring," he contends, was the result of a complex political process conditioned by bureaucratic inertia, coalition politics, and East European pressures.