Tracing Soviet Postwar Patterns

...Tracing Soviet Postwar Patterns_ Stalin's American Policy: From Entente to Detente to Cold War By William Taubman Norton 291 pp $18.95 Reviewed by Robert Taylor THE PROTAGONISTS of this painstaking study are America and the Soviet Union in their heady first years as postwar superpowers The degeneration of their once friendly relations follows a disturbingly familiar pattern in William Taubman's portrayal—distrust, misperception and growing hostility If the author ultimately raises more questions than he answers about East-West relations, he nonetheless succeeds in evoking some sobering parallels to the present decline of detente Perhaps his most provocative argument is that there was an interim, less sharply combative period of 18 months separating the breakdown of the wartime alliance from the onset of the Cold War Those who think of detente as the brainchild of Henry Kissmger, Taubman contends, fail to realize that rivalry with the West in an atmosphere of eased tensions "is a recurring aspiration of Soviet diplomacy " He notes that all Soviet leaders have acted out of a deep suspicion of their adversaries, and that Stalin, "the most distrustful of all, actually hewed to postwar detente longer than the United States did " That is not to say that "Uncle Joe" (Franklin D Roosevelt's nickname for his difficult ally) was a misunderstood victim of Yankee hostility At the outset of the relationship Stalin's American counterparts frequently gave him undue benefit of the doubt, just as they later came to presume hidden ruses in his every move And this despite the fact that in the early days of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Umon Stalm certainly had cause to fear the Americans would not help him, considenng the opportunism of his previous pact with Hitler Taubman's review of the wartime diplomatic record shows a Roosevelt ready to accommodate and disposed to look favorably on Soviet motives and objectives, in contradiction of the less sanguine evaluations of his own State Department...

...FDR's determination to win the trust of the moody and suspicious Soviets through unstinting assistance with no political strings attached postponed the day of superpower reckoning Even as Nazi forces were pushing toward Moscow, Stalin was bargaining hard with his allies to choose between the "algebra" of vague, unenforceable agreements on war aims and his own preference for the "practical arithmetic" of secret protocols that would div-vy up the postwar world in advance When he began to nail down his domination of Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, the persistent American predilection for algebra left FDR convinced that the West was not conceding Eastern Europe Meanwhile, Stalin regarded FDR's oft-repeated respect for public opinion as a cover for an unspoken understanding, reading his own devious-ness into the American President Thus Roosevelt sought a common ground for long-term cooperation with Stalin in vain The USSR's manipulation of Eastern European governments, its military threats to Turkey and Iran, and its careful probings in Western Europe contributed to a rising anti-Commumst mood in the new Truman Administration By the end of 1945, the wartime entente had broken down Still, for the next year and a half Stalin mixed his diplomatic signals to the Americans in a unilateral hot and cold version of detente—intransigence in Eastern Europe coupled with moderation in Asia and Western Europe, stndent condemnation of his former allies and a simultaneous eagerness for pragmatic horse-trading (In the light of more recent Soviet "peace campaigns," we would do well to recall that Stalin mounted a similar drive 35 years ago—an effort, Taubman suggests, that merely heightened alarm in the West) The Soviet pursuit of detente after Truman had given up on it foundered further on the unequal terms Stalin offered Taubman's interpretation is that Stalm wasn't seeking a lastmg accord with the United States, he was playing a delaying game of slow talks and gradual concessions, hoping for Western economic crises to open new opportunities for Soviet advances Only the Marshall Plan's establishment of U S commitment to Western Europe and the temptation of American aid to the Eastern bloc jarred him from his mistaken belief that the West would accept his maneuvers indefinitely According to the author, "The detente that Stalin pursued was a snare and delusion " Although the Truman Administration saw through Stalin's schemes, it was right for the wrong reasons From the wartime American illusion of lasting U S -Soviet amity, Truman and his advisers shifted quickly to a stark conviction that the Soviets had designs for global domination even at the price of a new world war Forgotten along the way was the advice of George F Kennan Truman's advisers ignored Kennan's reassurances that the Soviet Umon was not everything we feared, in the same way that Roosevelt's had paid little heed to Kennan's warnings that the Soviet Union was not all we hoped In a brief sweep over the Soviet-American oscillations between confrontation and openness since Stalm, Taubman notes a significant change in the American approach Where Roosevelt relied mostly on carrots and Truman mostly on sticks, Nixon and Kissinger combined the two in the 1970s New visions of long-term concord were bound to be frustrated, however, as the Soviets exploited detente to their advantage...

...Indeed, American lurches from conciliatory vagueness to belated sanctions have been a hallmark of many other misinterpretations of Soviet behavior, right up to the early days of 1980 when the invasion of Afghanistan so radically changed Jimmy Carter's opinion of the men in the Kremlin In the case of Solidarity, Brezhnev and his Politburo knew that the present wave of repression in Poland would not foster detente with an already unsympathetic Reagan Administration, yet had little reason to fear it would lead to military confrontation with the West Moreover, the veiled role of today's So-viet pressure ensures division in the Western alliance and puts Reagan in a dilemma not unlike the one Truman faced after the War Interestingly, Prime Minister Woj-ciech Jaruzelski now echoes the words of a predecessor, Josef Cyrankiewicz, who warned in 1947 that a cutoff of Western assistance "could push Poland to the East " Whether we should continue aid for the limited leverage it might afford, or conclude that Poland could not be lured back by our dollars went unresolved tn the '40s, and the issue is still with us Although Taubman cannot provide easy answers to recurring foreign policy questions, he does provoke us to consider them in the light of previous U S -Soviet encounters One of his most important contributions, in fact, is his well-documented argument for regarding the Cold War not as the unique product of World War II and a paranoid Soviet dictator, but as the result of aims and tactics that persist to this day In sum, Stalin's American Policy is a timely reminder that we have been down basically the same road before Lamentably, remembering this grim route is no guarantee that we will not repeat past mistakes...

...the carrots were too few and the sticks too ineffective to sustain the process for long Consequently, says Taubman, American foreign policy makers today face "a triple bind Damned if you conciliate, damned if you resist, and damned if you do both simultaneously " Such a bleak axiom offers precious little guidance for a balanced American response that would oppose the repression in Poland and the occupation of Afghanistan on the one hand, and avoid risking a nuclear confrontation on the other Taubman admits he has "no good answer" to this and maintains all we can hope for m the immediate future is "to keep the lid on" through "skillful diplomacy backed by a strong defense ' In essence, Taubman views the Soviets as competitors and enemies who will deal with us, but never share our interests In the end, evaluation of Taubman's conclusions rests on how much we credit his assertion that "Stalin's American policy lives" in the current Kremlin leadership Poland provides a test Taubman argues that FDR's early wool-iness on the nature and intensity of his support for democratic forces in Poland encouraged Stalin to press for Communist rule well before the United States mounted a late and ineffectual protest...