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Some of the generals have been openly critical of Gorbachev's anti-military moves. An official Soviet commentator, Aleksandr Bovin, publicly acknowledged on Soviet television that Soviet "military comrades" were unhappy about some of Gorbachev's actions, particularly his decision to ban nuclear testing. They worry that the United States will have had a year and a quarter of additional testing while Gorbachev has held the Soviet Union back...
...opposing view by another American. U.S. Rear Admiral (ret.) Gene La Rocque, a strong opponent of Administration policy, argued that the U.S. MX missile "is a very dangerous weapons system" and questioned the Administration's commitment to reaching an arms control agreement in Geneva. International Panorama Host Alexander Bovin left no doubt about the Kremlin's preferences. He promptly declared that "La Rocque has quite accurately defined the weak points in the American approach to the talks...
...Soviets angrily deny the accusation of American hard-liners that the U.S.S.R. has its own doctrine of "fightable and winnable" nuclear war. Says Alexander Bovin, an Izvestia commentator and party official: "When a general talks to his troops, he tells them, 'We can win!' That is natural and unavoidable. But when civilian political figures talk about being able to fight and win a nuclear war, that's when we should all worry. Our politicians don't. Yours...
Asked whom he had in mind, Bovin pulled from a pile of papers on his desk the summer 1980 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. He pointed to an article co-authored by Colin Gray titled, straightforwardly, "Victory Is Possible." Gray, a conservative nuclear strategist from the Hudson Institute, is now a consultant to the State Department. In the article he theorizes that, with greatly increased offensive and defensive programs, the U.S. could hold casualties in a war to 20 million-"a level compatible with national survival and recovery...
...There's a general philosophy in Washington," says Bovin. "It's based on fear and ignorance and the most retrograde attitudes, but it's not yet a thought-out system for dealing with the real world. I cling to the hope that the contradictions between the initial philosophy and the still inchoate policy will be resolved positively." Arbatov agrees. He believes the current mood in the U.S. is a backlash against a decade of "disappointment and difficulty" that included Viet Nam, Watergate and the "humiliation" of the hostage crisis. "But I haven't lost all hope...