A Three-Way Game

...The unconvincing expressions of confidence at the 26th Party Congress offered few solutions to the Soviet situation "It there was an elusive quality to the proceedings, it may have been engendered by the perplexing sight of a superpower standing still," reported a London I manctal Times correspondent in Moscow And Shanor notes "What came out in dozens of conversations and interviews in the Soviet Union was a feeling of uncertainty and concern not far below the surface and between the Lines of the arrogant phrases ". But the impact of all this on Soviet foreign policy will depend to a great extent on pressures within the "triangle" consisting of Russia, China and the West Indeed, China's emergence as a superpower-in-the-making is the most significant recent international development, aside from nuclear parity, and still baffles Soviet policymakers...

...Shanor points out that it has led them to make uncharacteristic blunders One was their not adhering to the spirit of detente Another was their failure to head off the growth of closer ties between Washington and Peking A third was their not preventing the forging of links between China and Japan because of a few disputed islands Well versed as they are in the Leninist doctrine that peace is no less an instrument of policy than war, the Russians are only now discovering that they have unwittingly helped their most feared adversary to find friends and potential allies...

...Shanor urges the West to play the China card with subtlety, however, and not to employ it to exacerbate dangerous Soviet-Chinese antagonisms "The triangle can be used as a constant reminder in dealing with the Soviet Union that there is a competitor to think about " Without China, he observes, the West has "more levers of pressure, below the threshold of nuclear conflict, than the Soviet Union does " These include the USSR's economic troubles, its growing nationalities problems, and worsening difficulties in Eastern Europe The main purpose of the "diplomatic game," here minds us, "is to keep it a game, not to turn it into a war ". It may not be clear tor some time to vv hat extent Secretary Haig's tar-reading pronouncements are firmly established Administration positions or rhetoric designed to test the react ions of allies and adversaries But Shanor s lucid, penetrating study of geopolitical geometry is a useful tool gauging long-term possibilities and probabiliters as we approach the edge the next watershed...

...A Three-Way Game The Soviet Triangle By Donald Shanor St Martin's 296 pp $13 95 Reviewed by Norman Gelb Author, "Enemy in the Shadows" History is full of watersheds," critical moments in which the mainstream of actions and ideas is diverted into new channels We are currently approaching such a point in international affairs The failure of the Soviet leadership to open its geriatric ranks reveals Party boss Leonid I Brezhnev's concern that the "youngsters" just below in the hierarchy-for whom time will soon make room at the top anyway-harbor radical ideas and are not to be trusted Developments in Poland also imperil the USSR's position in Eastern Europe, and could eventually result in the cowed members of the Warsaw Pact becoming as difficult and temperamental as those of nato Western Europe, undergoing its worst economic setback since the Marshall Plan, is restless and uncertain And no one can tell where Secretary of State Alexander M Haig's Weltanschauung is leading us...

...His account of the Soviet's perceptions of what influences American thinking and conduct, particularly their emphasis on individual U S policymakers rather than on national interests, is most illuminating So is his assessment of the Kremlin's flirtations with Bonn and Pans in view of its realization that, ultimately, it cannot substitute any other country for the United States as "the main partner in international affairs " Whatever ploy to undermine Western unity may have been behind the conciliatory tone of Brezhnev's speech at the recent 26th Soviet Communist Party Congress, this awareness is no doubt a key factor in the formulation of Soviet policy Even more important must be the glaring economic inadequacies of the USSR, which "has long-term problems the West does not " Despite endless planning, the Russians are experiencing their smallest growth rate since World War II, they are faced with unsettling shortages of manpower, raw materials and domestically produced grain, and they are increasingly burdened by the substantial cost of supporting friendly regimes in such places as Cuba, Ethiopia and Afghanistan With 11 -15 per cent of its GNP allocated for defense (more than twice the American outlay), the Kremlin cannot relish the resumption of a costly arms race...

...Fatalists who believe in the certainty of armed conflict see the world as having emerged from the postwar period only to stumble helter-skelter into a prewar period But a formidable body of scholars and commentators is convinced that, especially given the balance of forces among the major powers, careful examination of the diplomatic options could prevent another major conflagration Donald Shanor is among them Shanor's The Soviet Triangle is ostensibly a study of "Russia's relations with China and the West in the 1980s In fact, it goes beyond that to analyze the views and aspirations of the major countries involved in the "East-West" stand-off Shanor, a veteran foreign correspondent and now director of the International Division of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, bases much of his book on extensive interviews with officials, diplomats and other informed individuals in the Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe and the United States...