Dangerous Relations: The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970-82

...His most recent work, Dangerous Relations, is in part an updating of Expansion and Coexistence, and, more significantly, a devastating critique of the failure of Arch Puddington is executive director of the League for Industrial Democracy and editor of Workers Under Communism...

...Although Ulam believes that detente, as formulated by Henry Kissinger, did not implicitly concede the dominant role to the Soviets, in practice it substantially enhanced the Soviet world role while exacerbating the confusion and division already apparent in the U.S...

...DANGEROUS RELATIONS: THE SOVIET UNION IN WORLD POLITICS, 1970-82 Adam B. Ulam/Oxford University Press/$25.00 Arch Puddington Although revisionist theories about U.S.-Soviet relations are for the time being no longer put forward with the brash confidence of the not-so-distant past, the thesis that America bears equal responsibility with the Soviet Union for the Cold War and its attendant evils continues to influence the political culture of the democratic world...

...appeared weak and disunited...

...Although he totally rejects the fatuous proposition that a belligerent American policy paved the way for the Soviet Union's subjugation of Eastern Europe, Ulam is as harsh in his judgment of American actions as those who deride him as a vestigial Cold Warrior...

...The greatest setbacks suffered during the past twenty years by the democratic community of nations have resulted not so much from action by the Soviets as from what the West has done to itself...

...responded to these developments with a hapless shrug, hoping against hope that a new and more pliable Soviet leadership would soon emerge, and waiting (in vain, as we now know) for the Soviets to recognize the folly of intervention in the Third World, a lesson we presumably learned in Vietnam...

...To wit: when the leader of South Yemen, a man initially installed in a Soviet-backed coup, made gestures toward an accommodation with the West, he and his supporters were murdered, presumably at Soviet instigation, and a more reliable official was named his successor...

...As a result, he says, we threw away several opportunities to prevent the sovietization of Eastern Europe, something which, he argues compel-lingly, was well within American capability...

...Despite our having conceded Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and the subsequent division of Europe into opposing power blocs, Ulam believes that the U.S...

...In addition to presenting the Soviets with endless opportunities for mischief, Western disunity created a further dilemma by making liberal democracy a far less appealing option for the elites of the underdeveloped countries...

...Governments that had never hesitated to denounce the United States for supporting Israel reacted to this act of aggression against coreligionists with the utmost caution, something even more notable in this case because the aggressor openly proclaimed official atheism...

...For those who agree with Ulam that the free world's competition with Soviet totalitarianism represents the overriding issue of our time, these are chilling words...

...The most important message of Dangerous Relations is that, as the Soviets never cease to argue, the correlation of forces has indeed shifted, if not to a convincing advantage for the Soviet Union, then sufficiently far in that direction to be a cause of real concern,for the democratic forces...

...Indeed, it was no longer necessary for the Soviets either to justify their own imperialistic actions or to criticize American behavior...

...Nevertheless, the Western alliance seems no more united than during the Carter years...

...The Yom Kippur War was the first crucial event, revealing serious divisions within the Western alliance and America's unwillingness to defend its friends forthrightly...

...Ulam traces the failure of U.S...

...The Soviets,- meanwhile, accomplished two seemingly irreconcilable goals: they convinced many Europeans that it was they who stood for peace, yet by refusing to dismantle the SS-20s they injected an added element of fear into the debate over European security...

...that our predominant position was the result not of our own shrewd policy choices but of external circumstances-the Sino-Soviet split, which presented the Soviets with a formidable and unpredictable antagonist at its borders...

...As the Third World be^ came increasingly unstable, authoritarian regimes of the left or right appeared to many as the only means of assuring order, presenting our government with a growing number of seemingly intractable problems...

...Yet he admits that cautionary words about the burden of empire would seem preposterous to the current generation of Soviet leaders, given the history of the past twelve years...

...Thus by the latter part of the Carter Administration it was the Soviets who were employing the strategies of containment and rollback, containing American efforts to expand its power throughout the world and rolling back our influence in such crucial areas of the Third World as Ethiopia and Nicaragua...

...He stresses the inherent instability of the Soviet empire, in particular the satellite nations of Eastern Europe, and observes that "Communism in power is no longer a servant or even a dependable asset to the Soviet Union," e.g., China and Poland...

...and the economic achievements of Western Europe, which stood as a constant reminder to Eastern -Europeans of the Communist system's repeated failures...

...When the Soviets mobilized a highly effective propaganda offensive-against this weapon, the Carter Administration stood by passively while the Kremlin's installation of its SS-20s proceeded apace...

...When Carter next abruptly jettisoned the bomb, he reinforced the perception of American indecisiveness without enhancing his own reputation as a peacemaker...

...was clearly the stronger of the two superpowers until at least 1964...

...Nor was the spectacle of American impotence reassuring to Third World leaders not otherwise disposed to sympathize with the Soviets...

...American foreign policy to meet its most important postwar challenge: checking the expansionist designs of the Soviets...

...To make matters worse, the Soviets had intervened in order to prop up a Communist regime in the midst of a brutal campaign to destroy the influence of traditional Moslem leaders...

...Despite the pessimistic tone which pervades this book, Ulam does not believe that the Kremlin is certain to prevail over the democratic world...

...Similarly, the collapse of detente is attributed to Jimmy Carter's "overreaction" to the events in Afghanistan while Soviet aggression, though deplored, is treated much more solicitously...

...Adam B. Ulam is one of a handful of eminent authorities on Soviet affairs to have consistently resisted the siren call of revisionism...

...More to the point, while detente in theory entailed a policy of rewards and punishments for Soviet global behavior, in practice penalties were never really imposed despite the repeated violations of What came to be known as the "code of detente...

...the Administration itself has contributed to the deterioration of a national consensus around a strong anti-Soviet policy through such actions as the resumption of grain trade with the Russians: It is, moreover, a discouraging sign of the times that this book-gracefully written, measured in tone, cogently argued- has received far less attention from the general political press than a dishonest apology for Soviet intentions like Richard Barnet's Real Security...

...His masterful study of Soviet foreign policy, Expansion and Coexistence, remains the basic text on this important subject...

...He stresses,-however...

...Another crucial event was our mishandling of the neutron bomb controversy...

...Ulam spells out the chronology of Soviet advance and Western retreat in distressing detail...

...To be sure, President Reagan's determined stance against Soviet global designs has compelled the Kremlin to adopt a more prudent course and has enhanced the opportunities for Western gains in such countries as Angola and Nicaragua...

...Declares Ulam: "It has been Moscow's reading of the strengths and weaknesses, and especially of the degree of cohesion, of the entire community of democratic nations that has been largely instrumental in shaping the USSR's.foreign policy...

...Expanded trade with the capitalist West allowed the Soviets to improve, minimally, the delivery of consumer goods to its own citizens, thereby decreasing the likelihood of popular discontent, and at the same time enabled the Soviets to continue then-massive military buildup...

...And if it is true that the Soviets face internal difficulties immeasurably more severe than those confronting us, it is equally true that we can no longer afford the luxury of assuming that, no matter how irresponsible or undisciplined our own behavior, America will always prevail.ca will always prevail...

...the business community has resolutely fought efforts to curb trade with the East...

...Yet no Arab nation severed diplomatic relations-with the Soviets, and what criticism was leveled at the Soviet action was largely pro forma...

...An even more striking demonstration of the Soviet Union's ability to minimize opposition to its global bullying was the relatively mild response of the Moslem world to the invasion of Afghanistan...

...Where it was once possible to batter away at the United States, secure in the knowledge that our global power was preeminent, this is no longer the case today...

...prominent American politicians and scholars would do the job for them, and do it much better...

...No matter where the Soviets intruded themselves, important segments of American society could be depended on to insist on policies of inaction, all the while assuring us that the Soviets would eventually discover that the costs of involvement in the Third World outweighed the benefits...

...If the American tendency to misread Soviet intentions and misjudge Soviet capabilities created serious problems during the Cold War era, the flaws in our assessment of the Kremlin's goals proved absolutely devastating as de*tente matured...

...The nuclear freeze movement, the arms control lobby, and their cheerleaders in Congress have opposed practically every initiative designed to strengthen U.S...

...The U.S...

...When detente was inaugurated, it was the Soviets who appeared confident and secure, while the U.S...

...Our unwillingness to confront the Soviets in turn ensured that the satellite nations would remain a source of tension and conflict...

...Except that for Ulam, it has been American miscalculation, indecision, impatience, and division which has contributed to global instability by repeatedly presenting the Soviets with opportunities for territorial and political gain...

...policy to the period immediately following World War II, when many key government figures vastly overestimated the Soviet Union's military potential...

...Nor is the picture any brighter in the United States...

...The fall of Vietnam further convinced the Soviets that the "correlation of forces" had shifted to their advantage, while in Angola the Kremlin, through its Cuban proxies, for the first time imposed its will militarily on a Third World country...

...The media have ridiculed Reagan's quite accurate depiction of the Soviets as imperialist bullies...

...Thus a fundamental assumption of the peace movement is "shared responsibility"-the notion that the West, and the United States most prominently, bears an equal burden of guilt with the Soviets for the invasion of Afghanistan, the persecution of Solidarity, and, to carry this ludicrous concept to its logical extreme, the Cambodian genocide...

...Subsequent American efforts to bolster North Yemen against its Marxist neighbor elicited the by-now inevitable chorus of "No more Vietnams" from Congress...

...One can hardly blame the Moslem world for its tepid reaction to the events in Afghanistan, given the rapid dissolution of the American consensus of support for the firm policies enunciated by Carter, with businessmen, farmers, and the arms control fraternity complaining about the harshness of the measures...

...credibility...

...Yet by the end of the 1960s, this advantage had been dissipated, as the divisions generated by the Vietnam war weakened America's ability to sustain a consistent anti-Soviet policy and as Western Europe sought separate arrangements with the Russians...