Gorshkov, Afghanistan, and NATO's global threat picture

Speed begins his strategic reply by describing Sergey Gorshkov's transformation of the Soviet Navy from a coastal-defence force into a blue-water fleet. He treats worldwide Soviet deployments as an instrument of state policy rather than an isolated expansion in ship numbers. The British defence white paper paired that growth with a decline in the size of the United States Navy. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan then made military coercion outside the NATO area an immediate planning concern and raised the prospect of a long guerrilla war. Speed argues that Western states would have to coordinate defence efforts beyond the alliance boundaries without weakening Europe. Naval construction was part of the broader foreign-policy contest of the late Cold War.