Reality and U.S.-Soviet Relations

...The typical American image of the USSR during what might be called the classic period of the Cold War (roughly between 1947-62) was of a would-be aggressor, ready to move in with force wherever it could anticipate little or no resistance...

...The new leadership's initial pronouncements have reflected its recognition that Brezhnev, rather than tackling some of the most pressing ailments of Soviet society and the Communist bloc, resorted to short-term solutions and sweeping things, so to speak, under the rug...

...One could foresee in 1972 the considerable strains the Western alliance would experience...

...should not try to match the USSR in the number or firepower of ICBMs...

...Surrogate military power was actually employed to bring Angola and Ethiopia into the Soviet sphere of influence, and to assure South Yemen's staying within it...

...Though what must be called the defeatism of the closing Vietnam years would gradually dissipate, America would never fully revert to the bracing belief that this country had the duty and the muscle to stand as an armed guardian over the entire non-Communist world...

...nuclear umbrella over the West...

...than SALT I, and/or in observing greater restraint in their adventuring in the Third World, etc...

...This was not done...

...it becomes alarmed when the two superpowers appear to be on a collision course...

...The world breathes easier when Moscow and Washington are engaged in a civil dialogue...

...Beyond that, they are sophisticated enough to know that in the American political system the President may propose, but it is the Congress and public opinion that dispose...

...to launch a peace drive and attempt to patch up detente...

...Nevertheless, the ossification of the political system and the ruling elite's deeply conservative cast of mind make it debatable whether the regime can carry out any basic reforms on the economic front...

...Next, the blow dealt by opec in 1973-74 threw the West into disarray, and was a major cause of the economic crisis that to this day plagues the world...

...talk and tough bargaining might have brought a measure of accommodation on terms much more favorable to the West than those subsequently obtained under detente...

...Vietnam fragmented the consensus on the main lines of foreign policy that had been such a prominent feature of the American political scene for some 20 years...

...The oil cartel's exorbitant price hikes have done more damage to the economic, political and ultimately military power of the West than any post-World War II action of the Soviet Union...

...All signs in other words, point to Andropov continuing to try to compensate for domestic and intra-bloc dilemmas by pursuing an expansionist foreign policy, and by capitalizing on the vulnerabilities of the democratic world...

...It meant, in fact, the West's acceptance of the division of Europe, notably of Germany-A principal Kremlin objective from the days of Potsdam...

...On the other hand, the declaration signed by Richard M. Nixon and Leonid I. Brezhnev at the Moscow summit included a pledge that the two countries "attach major importance to preventing the development of situations capable of causing a dangerous exacerbation of their relations...

...On the Even if Moscow had planned to observe scrupulously the spirit as well as the letter of the '72 accords, it could hardly have resisted the opportunities opened to it by the lingering impasse between the Executive and Congress in this country, and by the debilitating effects of the energy crisis on the entire non-Communist community...

...One suspects that in the '50s or early '60s, they would have been willing to pay for it (possibly by an arms agreement more favorable to the U.S...

...The West's disarray, the failure to appreciate the psychologico-political dimension of nuclear arms, and all the sins of omission on the part of the democratic world have undoubtedly contributed to the sins of commission by the Kremlin...

...None of this precludes an effort on the part of Andropov and Co...

...But the man in the street, whether in Washington, Paris or Munich, could only draw the obvious conclusion from the relevant statistics: In several categories of strategic weapons, the U.S...

...The real source of Soviet anxieties lies in the Kremlin's awareness of the increasing difficulties of managing its empire and coping with the long-run intractability of its Chinese problem...

...Much of the subsequent trouble with detente would have been avoided had nato hastened in the wake of the 1972 agreements to bring its conventional forces to parity with the Warsaw Pact, and then proceeded to improve its arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons...

...Similarly, while it may be possible to restore the full rigor of Communist-type law and order in Poland, the events of the past two years have amply demonstrated the fragility of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and their utter inability to strike deep roots among the peoples of the area...

...For the time being Sino-Soviet tension may be papered over...

...This simplistic conception produced the conviction in Washington that any slackening of the West's armed preparedness and vigilance would open the path to aggression by the USSR, a conviction seemingly vindicated by the outcome of the Cuban missile crisis...

...Nor did the Russians prescribe nato's strategy, he observed, so they cannot be blamed for the fact that the West's much higher GNP notwithstanding, its conventional forces have remained inferior to those of the Warsaw Pact...

...The Soviet rulers were seen as responding primarily to ideological imperatives-their basic premise, the continuing decline of the capitalist system...

...My interlocutor might well have added that it was the inability of the great industrial democracies to coordinate their policies that enabled opec to undermine their vital interests...

...Instead, beginning with the late 1960s, Washington shifted to diplomacy as the main instrument for coping with Russia...

...contrary, these were deepened by the figures of the Warsaw Pact soldiers and tanks, and the number of Soviet intercontinental and intermediate ballistic missiles...

...It is even less likely that the Kremlin could bring itself to sanction fundamental changes in its external empire-say, allowing a gradual "Fin-landization" of Eastern Europe...

...government...

...In the past, the essential nature of the matter seemed quite apparent: America had to stop Soviet and Communist (the two were then thought synonymous) expansion...

...Finally, to save the Communist regime in Afghanistan that had been installed at its instigation a year and a half before, Moscow invaded with its own Armed Forces in December 1979...

...The years 1973-79, however, saw the Soviet Union abandon the restraint that had characterized its pre-detente posture in the Third World...

...Such, then, is the background of the present state of Soviet-American relations...

...Having gained so many tangible benefits from the disunity and errors on the other side, the USSR is bound to try to exploit them to the full...

...Yet it was not unreasonable for Washington to expect that at least for a brief period the USSR would refrain from blatantly extending its power and influence...

...The use of Soviet troops was threatened in the 1973 Middle East crisis...

...and to each other...

...The Soviets count on the silent persuasiveness of their ICBMs and tanks to deter Western Europe from following Washington's desires too closely...

...Despite the unfavorable implications of the 1972 agreements, detente might have proved less ephemeral were it not for two other developments-neither of which, it is only fair to say, was triggered by the Kremlin...

...Meanwhile, by remaining insensitive to the genuine Russian fears that were already perceptible by the late 1950s, particularly those connected with the Sino-Soviet conflict, Washington overlooked occasions where patient Adam B. Ulam is Gurney Professor of History and Political Science and Director of the Russian Research Center at Harvard...

...had acquiesced to quantitative inferiority...

...The democratic countries, unlike the USSR, have never been skillful in the art of synchronizing their diplomatic and military moves...

...Them is perception was largely responsible for America's massive military intervention in Southeast Asia: Peking was going to be taught the lesson that "wars of national liberation" could not overthrow regimes protected by the U.S...

...What is clear, therefore, is that over the long term the West cannot meet the Soviet challenge merely through arms control agreements and incantations at summit meetings...

...The Pentagon could still argue, perhaps convincingly for an expert, that America's ICBMs and SLBMs were technically better than the other side's and consequently a credible deterrent...

...approach to the USSR...

...Detente, once it came, inevitably reflected this changed configuration of forces between the two superpowers...

...Only if the Kremlin becomes wholly convinced of America's determination and ability to match the Soviet defense effort will it countenance meeting the West part way on strategic and tactical nuclear arms reduction and control...

...The Soviets obtained the virtual acknowledgment of their hegemony in the East free of charge, so to speak...

...Much as they choose publicly to ascribe the darkest designs to the Reagan Administration, in their private calculations Party chief Yuri V. Andropov and his Politburo colleagues know how to distinguish between the shrill words emanating from Washington and the actual aims of the U.S...

...Adequate military power is a necessary ingredient in warding off the danger of war, but it must be combined with Western unity and statesmanship if we are to lay the groundwork for real peace...

...foreign policy...

...The American-Soviet rapprochement was bound to dissipate a good deal of the West Europeans' sense of urgency about maintaining effective defenses against the USSR, yet it could not remove their basic fears...

...Both sides recognize that efforts to obtain unilateral advantages at the expense of the other, directly or indirectly, are inconsistent with these objectives...

...The shift occurred when-except for the opening to China-America's diplomatic and military position vis-avis the USSR was much weaker than at any point since World War II...

...Nor can Washington deal effectively with the challenge simply by increasing its military strength...

...Confronted by the strength, unity and resolve of the free world, the masters of the Kremlin would eventually have to discard their schemes of foreign conquest and domination and settle down to a more cooperative relationship with the rest of the international community...

...This insecurity does not spring from any apprehension about the likelihood of armed confrontation with the United States...

...it grows apprehensive when, as happens more often, they address each other with strident rhetoric...

...At any rate, the strategic arms agreement of 1972 formally registered an end to American nuclear supremacy and thus psychologically, at least, put in question the reliability of the U.S...

...Not surprisingly, therefore, the average American has come to consider the USSR as the Number One problem of U.S...

...As a recent Soviet visitor poignantly reminded me, it was not the Kremlin but the Pentagon that decided in the 1960s that the U.S...

...His latest book, Dangerous Relations: The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970-82, will be published in the spring by Oxford University Press...

...The new Secretary General needs time to consolidate, and in such periods the Kremlin is often at pains to appear peaceful and accommodating to the outside world...

...It will not slacken in its efforts to further weaken the ties that bind the Western European countries, both to the U.S...

...in a decade or two, though, China will probably be a major industrial, and hence military, power...

...First, Watergate and its aftermath nearly paralyzed our foreign policy precisely when Washington should have been formulating a new pattern of relations with Moscow and Peking...

...The strong feeling, basically unshaken even by Nikita Khrushchev's summitry campaign, was that negotiating with Moscow could not lead to any positive results...

...Moreover, it is not entirely inconceivable that a recurrence of the Polish brand of troubles in the "camp of socialism" might reverberate within the USSR itself...

...The entire complex of recent Soviet defense and foreign policies cannot be understood without recognizing that although the USSR is now militarily more powerful than ever before, in absolute and relative terms, the regime feels less secure than at any period since the post-Stalin trauma of 1953-56...

...Moscow also hopes its armed might will dissuade the West as a whole from giving large-scale economic and technological help to China...

...Reality and U.S.-Soviet Relations mtom 8 ulam Ever since the end of World War II, the state of American-Soviet relations has been viewed as the key to the overall international situation...

...In short, at the time of America's enormous industrial and nuclear superiority over the USSR, the West greatly overestimated the Soviet Union and tended to take its bluffs and bluster at face value...

...One may argue that nations bound by the closest ties of friendship would have found it difficult to abide by this precept of international virtue...

...And it will continue to cling tenaciously to its quantitative edge in several categories of nuclear weapons...

...their goal, to make the world safe for Communism...

...Especially during the first years of the Johnson Administration, the nuclear test-ban treaty and Khrushchev's retreat in the Cuban missile crisis led to the view that the Soviet Union had become practically a status quo power, and that China was now the chief advocate of the militant promotion of global Communism...

...The events of the 1960s markedly changed the U.S...