The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

1970s, the “main enemy” of the USSR had begun to surpass its rivals. This advantage wasdue in large part to the quantity and quality of the American nuclear arsenal and modernconventional weapons that were produced using the most modern and advancedtechnologies. The General Staff reported that during the last twenty years, the number ofnuclear warheads on United States strategic carriers had grown from four thousand to overten thousand. There were seven thousand such warheads on European territory. Inaddition, nuclear warheads had been deployed around the entire perimeter of the SovietUnion. Ustinov was primarily concerned about the high-precision, long-range cruisemissiles, twelve thousand of which the Americans planned to direct against the SovietUnion. It was obvious that such missiles, as well as intermediate-range conventionalmissiles, presented a major threat. In a matter of hours they could paralyze the USSR’sentire defense system by knocking out military headquarters, control centers, andcommunication centers.When Ustinov asked the leaders of his military staff if the Soviet means of airdefense were capable of identifying the launch of Pershing-2 missiles within two minutes oftheir launch from Western Europe, he received a negative answer. The ministerimmediately ordered the development of effective missile defense systems, regardless ofthe cost.The General Staff was tasked with developing a plan for preventive offensiveoperations in Europe that would begin upon the discovery of the first signs that NATOforces were mounting an offensive. This plan involved tens of nuclear strikes using tacticalnuclear weapons against targets in Europe, with a simultaneous advance by tank brigadesdeep into enemy territory along a broad front.665