in the r16 sense of the things , the attack oriented WP posture in Europe was a defensive move . True , Soviets were messing all over the globe to contest the fruits of de-colonization with the Americans , yet until 1975 or so when the US found itself in a crisis of faith after the fall of Vietnam , ı can't imagine Kremlin actually talking about a global domination , something they quickly gave up . Andropov would have initiated the Gorbachev Reforms right then , if he could . You know he actually picked up Gorby .
so this presumes proxy wars all around the globe with a comparatively peaceful line between NATO and WP . Yet America had far more options for militarily hurting the USSR , especially after Nixon's deal with China . If something was suspected , a massive attack onto European NATO would be initiated with the assumption that European -specifically Germanic- opposition to use of tactical nukes . ( On this thing , there have been some Turkish forum discussions whether West Germany could have "rebelled up to a point" to provide unhindered Special Forces access to NATO tactical nuke depots to avoid becoming a nuclear wasteland before Americans finally "accepted" the need for proper Conventional Forces instead of the Tripwire structure as the Flexible Response . ) A slice of land captured and held with hopes of political dissention to break up NATO -even America itself .
a long Conventional war , despite NATO allegations to the contrary would have ended in the utter defeat of the Soviet Union with all the indicators favouring the West . A total nuclear war , with attendant casualty figures was already out , right ?
though the real fun begins with what people assumed the other people had under wraps . Have posted a bit on Russian views on hostile Aviation ; ı have it on the authority of Bill Gunston , the noted Aviation writer , that NATO was in panic over reports of a Soviet anti tank missile with Microwave radar in 1982 , a Brimstone even before the US had managed the Hellfire , to knock out Allied tanks in the approach or in contact , available on such a scale that speculative firing would be the norm , taking out trucks , planes on runways , artillery pits and machine gunposts with equal facility . ı remember the Soviet Lazer tank in action in Afghanistan as claimed by an official US DoD publication , a classmate in high school would write to America each year and the book would duly arrive ... ( ı recently found a superb site which also mentions it ; though it is in Russian and machine translation can make it real weird ) Even funnier is the fact that the latest Soviet fighters were built to use NATO norms , you "can" refuel Fulcrums from American fuel pipelines and hang Sparrows on them too ... Spying certainly made it harder to have a clear view of what the other guy had . Too much intelligence makes people dumb .
this uneasiness with Conventional means led to massive Nuclear armouries of the both sides . Even if you could shoot down ICBMs , you couldn't stop all of them and there was no guarantee that a surprise full size war breaker could get everything still on the ground . And there were enough plans to use nukes in every scale . Iraq 1991 was a surprise for everyone , in the ease Americans defeated a large force . Except those who actually paid attention to what might have happened . ( And no , it's not unmatched , go 50 years into past and you will see the Wehrmacht essentially did even better in Yugoslavia in 1941 ) And armies actually need a few who are capable of paying attention ; that's how quite skewed opinions would go into warplanning . ı think it was Anthony Boscia who posted the Soviets thought they were outnumbered 6 to 1 in Europe . They sure would be , had Area 51 had a bunch of hypersonic intercontinental full-spec Stealth bombers , each capable of knocking out an armoured division with cluster bombs in a single pass .
everybody feared conventional war , on the grounds that the enemy could have something up the sleeve , nukes were much safer ... Something they were "sure" to win .
? Or will you keep going?
