THE MYTH OF SOVIET AGGRESSION

...It may be harder for them to tame Fidel than to "liberate" South Africa...

...In the U.S...

...Churchill had feared just that, had pushed for a Balkan expedition by the Americans and English to avert it...

...Where it was not cautious-in the Crimean war, in 1905, in 1914- it paid a heavy price, in the last case committing the ultimate act of suicide...

...The answer can only be found in a study of Russian foreign policy and society...

...And without viable structures of a modern society, foreign policy and warfare in the nuclear age are not possible...

...The real question is, who is capable of handling its nuclear potential in such a way that its military sector can be contained, a peaceful modus vivendi maintained and policies evolved leading to development in the Third World and to modernization at home...

...The recent 25th Party Congress has again focused on the basic contradictions of Soviet society, which manifest themselves primarily in the imbalance between so-called heavy industry and consumer goods production...

...In both countries space and weapons have emerged as elitist sectors in the economy...

...In Russia, on the other hand, there is a real polarization, and this sector is isolated from the others...

...It was not out of reluctance to impose fear and terror on his people-these were the very means he had used to consolidate his power...

...Was it perhaps Fidel Castro, whose connections with the African liberation movements are closer than either the USSR's or the Americans', who used Russian equipment...

...For the planning bureaucracy, modernization, mechanization and automation for purposes of mass consumption are much more complicated than the straightforward demands of the military and producers of raw materials...

...Can such a society compete effectively...

...But the way these weapons are controlled, and Russian capability to make use of them as part of any planned policy must be explored...

...This problem is not unrelated to the growing estrangement between the Soviet bureaucracy and western Communist parties...

...On the Eastern front facing China (and potentially Japan), tanks and bombers have priority, and the equipment of great masses of soldiers is relatively easy to accomplish...

...The real issue then is the transformation of Soviet society...

...one can easily imagine that the only people more upset by the prospect of Communist participation in the Italian government than Kissinger are the Russian leaders, the more so since the Italian heresy seems to be rubbing off on the traditionally Stalinist French Communist party...

...Our efforts to "preserve" the status quo by bringing down governments distasteful to us are more likely to redound to the benefit of the Soviets than their own initiatives...

...It has become fashionable to argue that there is no defense against nuclear arms, that there is no chance of surviving a nuclear war...

...weapons have changed, the Third World has come into being...

...Today, the problem is more complicated...

...But if American policy has specialized in baroque disasters like Southeast Asia and Greece, Soviet policy, in its own quiet and cautious way, has hardly proven more successful...

...Their main function is social control, and they exercise control in the face of great failures and only small successes...

...Rather, it calls for some clear and honest thinking about how American policy can be diverted from a self-defeating, futile direction...

...Neither Russian nor Chinese leadership quite believes that, yet the Soviet leadership remains primarily defense-minded...

...they have shown little aggressiveness and experienced even less success...

...There was a power vacuum in Eastern Europe, and Russia moved in, to the surprise of no realistic observer...

...The USSR showed an extraordinary alacrity in disengaging itself during the Cuban missile crisis and from the Sinai War, hardly paralleled by American stubbornness in Vietnam...

...Advanced weaponry is developed in the laboratory, not in the factory, and success in developing such weaponry depends on education, the intelligentsia and the whole milieu of a truly technological existence...

...It was out of mistrust, out of fear that the Soviet Union would collapse in the face of German arms, as a result of antagonism to his regime...

...This issue has come up periodically since Stalin's death...

...Although the gap between "mass" and "elite," between advanced and backward sectors of the economy certainly does exist here, limiting economic development, the degree to which this is the case is significantly less than in the USSR...

...Despite excellent conditions for the Communists, Stalin stayed out of Greece...

...There has been an oppression, rather than a proliferation of the intelligentsia...

...as well...

...Our agriculture is long mechanized, our society has larger and better educated "white collar" or "middle class" strata...

...The military industrial complex has never lacked good reasons for expanding its role and increasing its budget...

...seems determined to pursue futile counter-revolutionary policies there...

...Is Castro simply a tool of the Soviets...

...It is highly unlikely that either of the great powers will ever forgo interference in the Third World, whose economic and strategic role is increasing...

...But if our skepticism is to be well founded, it must be based on an analysis of Soviet weapons and Soviet policy...

...The fear of liberalization, the fear of the intelligentsia thwart the development of an advanced society...

...III Our problem is not to determine who will start a nuclear war...

...But the Soviet Union has most of what it needs within its borders...

...In Portugal, where presumably Russia showed less caution, and gave the green light to Cunhal for a hard-line policy, the Communists were not only defeated but may well have contributed to the failure of the whole revolutionary experiment...

...But it was no longer the forum of comrades and friends of 1917, in which disagreement was compatible with solidarity...

...I The extreme caution of Soviet foreign policy, and its self-destructive consequences, have become well known...

...This policy was not based on fantasy-two German invasions in three decades had left their mark...

...To a large extent, that problem is hidden behind the mask of the "revolutionary" and "liberating" role of Soviet ideology in the Third and Fourth worlds...

...But nuclear arms and air power have made such protection irrelevant...

...Soviet foreign policy does not call for the allocation of vastly increased "defense" spend-ings by the United States...

...It is by now generally known how Stalin, despite warnings from all sides, hesitated for hours before facing the reality of the German invasion in 1941...

...Yet the Russian intelligentsia is increasingly isolated, and the polarization between the narrowly defined military sector and the process of civil production is not only continued but aggravated (this is in part the case because the intellectuals are feared...

...These contradictions prevail, of course, in the U.S...

...It is unlikely that any of the superpowers will ever do so...

...Militarily speaking, Russian planners confront two different tasks...

...Together with accounts of new sophisticated weapons developments, these reports imply that the Russians are challenging American interests abroad...

...Such a conclusion is always suspect...

...But planning is responsible for the emergence of an apparatus of management and engineering skills which is one of the Soviets' main achievements (it is from the ranks of engineers that both Brezhnev and Kosygin come...

...These failures have often been blamed on "planning...

...Overruled by Roosevelt, he was quite happy to negotiate sphere-of-influence agreements with Stalin, which Stalin kept...

...It is also true that possession of nuclear weapons almost automatically calls forth a certain aggressiveness...

...The Soviets have had a good hand and played it badly...

...Cuba did not become a springboard to Latin America, and only American inflexibility has prevented Cuban estrangement from Russia...

...Likewise, the Soviet regime, despite its calls for international revolution, accepted the humiliation of the peace of Brest Litovsk (despite vigorous opposition within the Bolshevik ranks), rather than destroy itself the way its predecessors had done...

...Human initiative and stable technology grounded in a flexible social structure are the real determining factors in peace and war in the nuclear age...

...Can Russian society be mobilized for an atomic war or planned adventure...

...Stalin had reduced the Pclitbureau to passivity, had ignored the Central Committee, and did not convene party congresses, once the scene of free-wheeling debate in the days of Lenin...

...That did not happen, and by 1945 Stalin had regained his "clairvoyant" image...

...What are the reasons for such over-cautious behavior, for Soviet inability to take advantage of the Americans' handicaps...

...It cannot be denied that the Soviets are willing to exploit American weakness...

...Even within industry, wide gaps in production and level of skills remain...

...In the past, the question of whether Communist parties should participate in "bourgeois democracy" has been at the nub of the problem...

...Where Communist parties have been successful in Western Europe, it has been by moving away from Moscow...

...They are talking about extending the benefits of technological society in the form of the "good life...

...There are other differences as well...

...This masquerade can only be maintained so long as the U.S...

...II There is a contradiction between Soviet rhetoric and the real operation of Soviet policy...

...The Soviet Union stands to gain more from our follies than from its own strength...

...In other words, there has not been a sufficient upgrading of skills in Russia...

...Still, we must not be victims of historicism...

...Traditional Soviet defensiveness has never precluded support for "liberation" movements...

...So far, the decision-making power of these institutions has not been challenged, and they have succeeded in keeping secret the way in which their decisions are formulated...

...It is not simply a question of giving the western parties more autonomy...

...The Soviet model is decreasingly relevant to the West, where the problem is the participation of the working class in advanced, post-industrial technological environments...

...Soviet "aggressiveness" is a means of maintaining and channeling Soviet retardation-just as America's "tough stand" against that "aggression" is a means of immobilizing great social change in this country Ironically, the two countries are really quite interdependent, in a vaguely Orwellian sense...

...Ironically, Stalin and his successors were never able to impose their rule over Yugoslavia and Albania...

...To summarize these experiences is not difficult: in agriculture, collectivization, mechanization and chemical fertilization have not resulted in brilliant successes, as demonstrated by last year's abysmal harvest...

...Although ideologically America appears to stand for the status quo and the Soviet Union for "revolutionary change," this is not reflected in their governmental or social structures...

...It is the overwhelming allocation of resources to weaponry and space technology which has disorganized the overall industrial structure, has limited scientific manpower in other areas, which has left agriculture an underdeveloped area, and the peasantry a backward social stratum...

...Compared with the U.S., the Soviet Union is conservative and timid...

...The differential between industry and agriculture has remained, although elimination of the gap has been a major goal of the regime...

...When people speak of extending the consumer sector in Russia, they don't mean satisfying elemental survival needs, as in India and China...

...Perhaps Soviet policy has changed...

...It reflects the fact that the bureaucracy finds it much easier to increase access to the virtually inexhaustible supply of raw materials, and to produce heavy machinery for military purposes, transport and mining, than to create a more flexible orientation for agricultural goods (for example, different kinds of tractors better suited for the different kinds of soil in the USSR), more and better spare parts and a wider variety of higher quality consumer goods: textiles, radios, communications equipment, leather goods, etc...

...Kissinger and Brezhnev, for example, both fear that the Italian Communists will become a government party and succeed, since the fallout would hit both sides...

...As for Soviet policy in Angola, the Soviet leaders- whatever Brezhnev may say-have simply used the inevitable trend against South Africa's racial policies against the former Portuguese colonies...

...The attitudes of the western parties must necessarily have an impact on the Soviet system itself, and on Eastern Europe...

...If "aggression" be the result of a conscious sense of superiority or inferiority, aggression will not occur in the Soviet Union so long as its institutions remain what they are...

...But why...

...The tsarist regime, despite grandiose pan-slavic ambitions, despite its historic quest for control of the straits, fulfilled none of its great aims...

...For when we appear to "defend" something, we are liable to bring about changes more fundamental (however inadvertent) than the Soviets...

...But is it that simple...

...On the Soviet side, such problems are decided by the Presidium (formerly Politbureau) and the Central Committee of the Communist Party...

...That Russia's policy was conservative after World War II does not prove that it is conservative now...

...There is a sharp gap between the willingness to commit weapons and materiel (Cuba, the Middle East) and the willingness to accept the political confrontations that ensue...

...Stalin, after World War II, aimed at one thing-to make Soviet borders more secure, to extend territorial protection as far west as possible, to place pro-Russian regimes in Central Europe...

...Soviet determination to avoid conflict in the Middle East resulted in their being run out of Egypt after enormous investments there...

...It is there that the division between production and consumer goods becomes more and more problematic...

...So long as the Americans defend a quite indefensible status quo-be it in Portugal and Spain, Angola, Chile, or Southern Africa-Soviet policy necessarily assumes a "progressive" cast (not because the KGB is more humanistic than the CIA...

...Nuclear weapons may have an inherent aggressive momentum of their own, but no one is more aware of this than the Presidium, and of the nuclear powers, none has a more stringent control of its arsenal, and of its diplomatic instrumentalities, than Russia...

...Recently Drew Middleton wrote in the New York Times: "The Soviet Union has used Cuban troops in Africa...

...much of the automation and computerization developed there has, however, found its way into other areas of production...

...Immediately after Stalin's death, the Politbureau re-emerged to its old potency as the Presidium...

...The main reason for Soviet involvement is ideological-the need to keep alive the myth of the "liberating" function of Soviet foreign policy...

...The 25th Congress, of course, did not face up to the real problems, but the underlying conflicts may have become a little more apparent...

...At the same time as our policymakers exalt the importance of detente, if no longer the word itself, they argue that the Soviet Union is probing our post-Vietnam, post-Watergate commitment in various places in Africa, Western Europe, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East and Korea...

...The logical conclusion is that we develop newer and more sophisticated weapons systems in response...

...What counts today is a society's ability to mobilize its human and natural resources to meet the challenges of the nuclear age...

...But it is quite questionable that a hard and fast line can be drawn between the two sectors...

...For Russia the disasters of the first years were overshadowed by the victories of the last...

...But in the West, the Russians must deal with the growing sophistication of American military technology...

...Ever since 1921, the requirement that western parties strictly accept the Soviet model has caused many problems...

...Now it represented the major interest groups in Soviet society, and its function was to crystallize unanimity on the basis of compromise...

...That implies the spin-off of technology from the military sector to the civilian...

...Soviet skepticism about military capabilities is based on fundamental experiences in other areas...

...Here, to be sure, the Soviets have an advantage...

...The West has "rational" economic reasons for involvement-the need for scarce raw materials (as well as irrational reasons from time to time...

...The Soviet leaders are well aware of their failures The sense of adventure is lacking in the Soviet Union Aggression as a calculated risk, as part of a computer-based game plan, is more a possibility here than there...