The New Soviet Challenge

As the Bush Administration undertakes its "comprehensive reassessment" of current U.S. foreign and defense policies and defines its own policy objectives for the next four years, no questions it faces are more urgent or fundamental than those raised by recent changes in the foreign and domestic policies of the Soviet Union.

Where is Mikhail Gorbachev taking the Soviet Union, and how should the West respond? How can the United States encourage what appear to be positive trends in the international environment while at the same time protecting itself against the potentially far-reaching consequences of a sudden reversal or upheaval in Soviet policy under Gorbachev or a successor?

The process of change in the Soviet Union involves high stakes, not only for the Soviet Union but also for the West. There is the hope that Gorbachev’s efforts to cope with the evident failure of the Soviet system may produce a more benign Soviet Union and thereby a more peaceful world. But there is also a real risk that Western concessions in such areas as trade, arms control and regional settlements — actions ostensibly taken to accelerate a Soviet reform process — may serve instead dangerously to increase Western dependence on the future stability and good will of the Soviet Union at a time when the Soviet Union’s future is increasingly unpredictable. Such Western policies may also remove what pressures do exist for positive change in the Soviet Union.

How the administration handles these issues will, in large measure, determine whether its foreign policy will be judged a failure or a success in safeguarding America’s future and advancing the cause of freedom.

Findings

The West has witnessed a level of change and upheaval in Soviet domestic life and foreign policy unparalleled since the death of Stalin.

Many in the West have come to accept the view that Gorbachev’s purposes and programs are leading to fundamental changes in the Soviet system which will result in a benign and peaceful Soviet future. But such predictions about the outcome of Gorbachev’s programs appear premature and overly optimistic.

The Optimistic Western Assessment:

Optimistic Western assessments of Gorbachev and future Soviet policies are based largely on extrapolations from Western political experience.

At the core of the predominant current Western assessment lies the assumption that Gorbachev is, at a fundamental level, a Western rationalist in a modern mold. He is viewed as a man who purportedly fully grasps the implications of the Soviet system’s economic failure and the resulting requirement for Soviet military and imperial retrenchment and political democratization as preconditions for future Soviet economic development.

This Western assessment of Gorbachev’s views, in turn, anticipates that he will succeed in leading the Soviet Union gradually toward a more democratic society and a peaceful posture in world affairs.

Under the influence of this optimistic view, U.S. foreign policy has in recent months come increasingly to be based on the tacit and largely unexamined assumption that, under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union is on its way to becoming a more reliable bargaining partner in international negotiations and a more "normal" participant in international life.

This assumption has prompted a greater readiness in the West than at any other time in history to pursue substantive and consequential agreements with the Soviet regime including in arms control, regional conflicts, and trade

While such agreements are commonly viewed as part of a process of "normalizing" the Soviet Union in its relations to the West, they also have the inevitable effect of reducing the West’s defenses and risking the West’s increasing dependence on future Soviet stability and good will.

The Reality of Gorbachev’s Policies and Programs

Gorbachev’s employment of perestroika and glasnost in Soviet foreign and domestic policy is more complex than most Western commentators acknowledge. A realistic assessment of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev’s requires a careful assessment of these complexities and their impact on the West.

Foreign and Defense Policy: The Continuing Challenge

In the four years of Mikhail Gorbachev’s rule (including in recent months), there have been a number of features of Soviet foreign and defense policy that are difficult to reconcile with the optimistic Western paradigm for explaining Gorbachev’s rule and future Soviet behavior.

Gorbachev’s campaign of overt diplomatic flexibility and apparent concessions has gone hand in hand with persistent Soviet secret warfare tactics including covert action, aid to proxies, disinformation, and espionage to achieve aggressive Soviet foreign policy aims.

Such activities have largely been ignored in the Western preoccupation with the Soviet Union’s more benign overt diplomatic campaigns. The activities include military assistance and "active measures" intelligence campaigns, e.g. in Central America, U.S. basing countries, southern Africa, the southwest Pacific and in Afghanistan, where the Soviets have continued significant cross-border intervention.

Strategically damaging Soviet intelligence operations have intensified against U.S. technology and diplomatic, military, and intelligence secrets. These operations could further increase, particularly with new on-site arms control inspection regimes (such as for INF and START) and with Western relaxation during a period of perceived detente.

The Soviet Union under Gorbachev has continued to violate major arms control agreements, including the ABM Treaty, and other international agreements such as the Helsinki accords.

Gorbachev has recently spoken about possible future cuts in Soviet defense spending, but the Soviet Union is still keeping basic information about defense spending secret from its own people and is investing heavily in its military capabilities — currently at some l6-20% of GNP — substantially above reasonable Soviet defense needs.

New, highly accurate and mobile Soviet weapons systems continue to be deployed in substantial numbers across a wide spectrum of strategic offense and strategic defense, as well as conventional and chemical arms, on a scale well beyond that of the West.

A heavily militarized Soviet space program seeks to assure Soviet military and commercial mastery of space.

Recent Soviet arms control proposals are far less benign in terms of their likely impact on stability and Western security than they may at first appear. For example, proposals for force reductions (e.g. those recently announced affecting conventional troops, armor and artillery in Central Europe) have the effect of legitimizing remaining force asymmetries favoring the Soviet Union. Similarly, Soviet campaigns for arms control bans (e.g. chemical weapons, nuclear tests, anti-satellite systems) involve systems in which the Soviet Union has significant leads in deployment and/or for which proposed limitations cannot be effectively verified.

As for the Soviet Union’s allies in East Europe, where nationalism is resurgent and the desire for radical reform is strong, they will be significantly constrained in attempting any fundamental shifts from the dominant Soviet system.

Finally, Gorbachev’s use of perestroika and glasnost to advance Soviet foreign policy constitutes a sophisticated form of Lenin’s classic adversarial strategy of "peaceful coexistence" to woo the democracies while rebuilding strength.

The appearance that the Soviet leader is dedicated to "openness" and pluralistic "reforms" has been of tangible benefit to Soviet foreign policy, and has been assiduously cultivated in the West by Gorbachev and his foreign policy team.

It is worth noting that Soviet exploitation of previous highly touted periods of domestic reform and international detente brought major gains for the Soviet Union — only to be followed by renewed Soviet oppression and aggression.

Domestic Policy: The Limits and Risks of Reform

Gorbachev’s declared purpose is not to dismantle, but to revitalize and strengthen the Communist system.

In focusing on Gorbachev’s economic motivations, Western commentators generally overlook the strong ideological component of his program, especially his avowed dedication to Leninism.

Gorbachev’s willingness to risk a high degree of upheaval in the service of social transformation marks him potentially as a major charismatic Communist leader in the tradition of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao (cf. Lenin’s New Economic Policy or Mao’s Cultural Revolution).

Such figures, however, are not motivated by a favorable disposition toward democracy and the West and have repeatedly taken their nations in risky and unpredictable directions.

In the domestic sphere, notwithstanding Western conventional wisdom, there are no firm indications that Gorbachev’s perestroika will lead to genuine democratization and rule of law or to fundamental improvements in the lives and liberties of ordinary Soviet citizens. It may well have the opposite effect.

While the Soviet intelligentsia has benefited from freer expression under glasnost, the proposed economic restructuring involves significant dislocations (factory closings, job loss, price rises, etc.) against which ordinary Soviet citizens (absent property rights or leverage as recognized political opposition) have no legal protection.

Despite Soviet rhetoric about "democratization," Gorbachev’s specific reform proposals tolerate no opposition parties and have led chiefly to a greater consolidation of power in the hands of Gorbachev himself.

In fact, there is reason to believe that Gorbachev is using perestroika and glasnost as tactical devices in domestic politics.

The key task Gorbachev has faced over the past four years has been the consolidation of his own power as the primary Soviet leader.

In co-opting the rhetoric of the Soviet dissident movement of the 1970s, and calling public attention to deep dissatisfactions within Soviet society, Gorbachev has sought to purge the bureaucracy and has unleashed what can only be frightening social forces from the standpoint of the Politburo and the senior apparat — forces that he would claim only he can control.

Whether Gorbachev can control these forces and succeed in revitalizing the Soviet system, and whether he will seek a path of true international restraint, remains an unclear and unpredictable challenge to Western security.

If Gorbachev cannot control and contain the new social forces and pressures within the Soviet dictatorial system, Soviet society faces unprecedented instabilities and/or a vigorous Stalinist backlash.

If, on the other hand, he can control them, he will become an extraordinary powerful — and potentially extremely dangerous — Communist leader at the head of a modernized and greatly strengthened Soviet Union.

Impact on the West: Mortgaging the Future

The West is banking on Gorbachev, but there is no guarantee at this early and unstable stage that apparent positive changes in Soviet foreign and domestic policy may not be reversed, either under Gorbachev or a successor. Such a reversal has always followed previous Soviet reform periods.

The West’s exposure to the risks of such a reversal has been greatly magnified by Gorbachev’s success in diminishing Western perceptions of a Soviet threat.

Gorbachev’s skillful diplomacy, in combination with highly publicized domestic reform proposals, has greatly increased political pressure in the West for cutting defense programs and for a wide range of concessions and new agreements with the Soviet Union.

Such agreements include: subsidized, untied financial credits; potentially damaging technology transfers; new and risky arms control agreements; and unilateral or otherwise unsound cuts in Western military deployments.

Gorbachev’s diplomatic and public-relations campaign is already significantly threatening the cohesion of the Western alliance system. It could lead to a situation where Europe’s and Japan’s technological and financial resources may be put ever more liberally at the disposal of the Soviet government.

If Gorbachev’s tactics contribute to a disintegration of the U.S. alliance arrangements with NATO and Pacific partners –already threatened by economic rivalries, considerations of American troop cuts, and arms control agreements that call into question the value of the American nuclear guarantee –then Gorbachev will have achieved a principal objective of Soviet foreign policy since Stalin.

Policy Recommendations

Reassessment: As the Administration undertakes its comprehensive reassessment of current U.S. foreign policy, it needs to reexamine from the ground up current optimistic assumptions about future Soviet aims and Soviet power under Gorbachev or his successors.

Helping Gorbachev: Given the lack of direct U.S. control over Soviet developments and the dearth of accurate Western knowledge of Gorbachev’s ultimate goals and prospects for success, Western policy should not be based on the notion that "helping" Gorbachev shape a strengthened Soviet system will necessarily create a safer world for the Western democracies.

Negotiations: U.S. attitudes toward negotiations with the Soviet Union should be governed by a recognition that there is, among the signs of "progress" in the USSR, considerable continuity in terms of undesirable Soviet behavior at home and abroad. As a result, the United States must fashion its positions so as to maximize American security and freedom of action in the event Soviet reforms are reversed, Gorbachev is toppled, or for some other reason the Soviet tone and actions toward the West suddenly shift again into a more overtly aggressive mode.

Concessions: Any consideration of possible concessions to the Soviet Union — whether in trade, arms control, regional negotiations, etc. — should be made not to improve the atmospherics of relations or to strengthen Gorbachev’s hand at home, but only in return for concrete Soviet actions that specifically and concretely diminish the threat posed by the Soviet Union to Western interests.

Threat, Noncompliance: U.S. leaders should avoid promoting through summitry or incautious public statements the impression that the Soviet threat has already significantly diminished or disappeared or that the Soviet Union has now ended its pattern of noncompliance with international agreements.

Words and Deeds: Emphasis in U.S. policy should be on highlighting discrepancies between Soviet words and deeds and pressing for their conformity. The United States should not mistake preliminary or cosmetic changes for fundamental transformation in Soviet conduct. In particular, the United States should press for:

Economic and Financial Security: The substantially increased Western leverage that accompanies Moscow’s urgent need for large-scale infusions of Western capital, technology, management, marketing skills and access to Western markets, should be used constructively to advance Western security goals, genuine economic reform within the USSR, and greater autonomy for Eastern Europe.

Public Diplomacy: The United States should conduct a broad-based information and public diplomacy program, including white papers, radio and television, to press for fundamental changes in Soviet actions at home and abroad and to inform the American people and others on both sides of the Iron Curtain of the true state of developments in the Soviet bloc.

Defense Modernization/SDI: The United States should maintain vigorous defense modernization programs, exploiting competitive advantages and including a commitment to deploy SDI. The United States should not make unilateral military cuts or any irreversible concessions in exchange for reversible changes in Soviet arms and policies.

Counterintelligence: The United States should, as an essential counterpart to the access granted the Soviets to U.S. facilities and technology, develop a comprehensive counterintelligence and security capability to protect sensitive technology, military secrets and intelligence sources and methods.

Alliances: The United States should undertake special efforts to preserve and refurbish the American alliance arrangements in Europe and Asia during a period in which the Soviet threat appears ambiguous and in which economic nationalism, Soviet arms control proposals and other centrifugal influences are causing — or exacerbating — serious divisions within our Alliances.

Bush Doctrine: As a successor to the Reagan Doctrine, a Bush Doctrine should be articulated early in the new administration stating that the United States will provide economic, diplomatic and appropriate military assistance to reverse the consolidation or expansion of communist regimes in the Third World and to promote self-determination and freedom through the achievement of independent, non-communist regimes.