Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: "Unhappy Cold Warriors"

National Security Archive Update, September 11, 2009
Previously Classified Interviews with Former Soviet Officials Reveal U.S. 
Strategic Intelligence Failure Over Decades
1995 Contractor Study Finds that U.S. Analysts Exaggerated Soviet 
Aggressiveness and Understated Moscow's Fears of a U.S. First Strike
For more information contact:
William Burr - 
202/994-7032
http://www.nsarchive.org/nukevault
Washington, DC, September 11, 2009 - During a 1972 command post exercise, 
according to top Soviet generals interviewed by Pentagon contractors at the 
end of the Cold War, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev "trembled" when he 
was asked to push a launch button, asking Soviet defense minister Grechko 
"this is definitely an exercise?" During the excercise, leaders of the 
Kremlin listened to a briefing on the results of a hypothetical war with the 
United States, in which a U.S. attack killed 80 million Soviet citizens and 
destroyed 85 percent of the country's industrial capacity.
This story appears in a recently declassified two-volume study on Soviet 
Intentions, 1965-1985, prepared in 1995 by the Pentagon contractor BDM 
Corporation, and published today for the first time by the National Security 
Archive. Based on an extraordinarily revealing series of interviews with 
former senior Soviet defense officials -- "unhappy Cold Warriors" -- during 
the final days of the Soviet Union, the BDM study puts Soviet nuclear policy 
in a fresh light by highlighting the leadership's recognition of the 
catastrophe of nuclear conflict, even while it supported preparations for 
fighting an unsurvivable war.
BDM's unique interview evidence with former Soviet military officers, 
military analysts, and industrial specialists covers a wide range of 
strategic issues, including force levels and postures, targeting and war 
planning, weapons effects, and the role of defense industries. BDM staffers 
compared this new evidence with mainly official and semi-official U.S. 
interpretations of Soviet strategic policy and decision-making during the 
Cold War. The BDM analysts identified what they saw as significant failures 
of analysis, including:
* "[Erring] on the side of overestimating Soviet aggressiveness" and 
underestimating "the extent to which the Soviet leadership was deterred from 
using nuclear weapons."
* Seriously misjudging Soviet military intentions, "which had the potential 
[to] mislead ... U.S. decision makers in the event of an extreme crisis."
* "Serious[ly] misunderstanding ... the Soviet decision-making process" by 
underestimating the "decisive influence exercised by the defense industry." 
That the defense industrial complex, not the Soviet high command, played a 
key role in driving the quantitative arms buildup "led U.S. analysts to ... 
exaggerate the aggressive intentions of the Soviets."
* The BDM study also shows that Soviet military high command "understood the 
devastating consequences of nuclear war" and believed that nuclear weapons 
use had to be avoided at "all costs." In 1968, a Defense Ministry study 
showed that Moscow could not win a nuclear war, even if it launched a first 
strike. Although Soviet ideology had insisted that survival was possible, no 
one in the leadership believed that.
During the 1970s, Team B critics of CIA intelligence analysis argued that 
the Soviets believed that they could win a nuclear war. According to William 
Burr, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, "these previously 
secret interviews show that inflated notions of the Soviet 'present 
danger' -- such as the Team B exercise -- were wrong, but that more 
conventional U.S. analysis -- Team A -- also misunderstood Soviet nuclear 
thinking and decision making."

 Nil novi. Mai visto Dr. Strangelove?
mi sembra di ricordare che nel finale il sovietico facesse scattare
qualcosa tipo un detonatore e il nazi si mettesse a camminare per i
benefici effetti delle radiazioni, e poi partiva una canzone di quelle
che piacciono a Mony in mezzo a un tripudio atomico, mi sbaglio?

 che piacciono a Mony in mezzo a un tripudio atomico, mi sbaglio?
in realtà l'"Ordigno-fine-di-mondo" esplode in automatico, e il nazi
si alza dalla sedia a rotelle in preda all'esaltazione. Poi in effetti
parte "We'll meet again" di Vera Lynn sopra a un montaggio di vari
funghi atomici. Capolavoro.
F.

 l'India.
gente di cui c'è da fidarsi eccome...potresti ricordare al gentile
pubblico quanti leader pakistani e indiani sono finiti morti ammazzati
o hanno subito golpe negli ultimi 60 anni?

 che piacciono a Mony in mezzo a un tripudio atomico, mi sbaglio?
Sbagli clamorosamente.