Brezhnev and Beyond

William G. Hyland

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1979

Summary:  The Brezhnev era is clearly ending. This October he will mark his fifteenth year as the head of the Party, a span at least four years longer than Nikita Khrushchev's official term. In December, he will be 73 and next spring he will, if he holds on, pass Stalin as the oldest Soviet leader ever to hold the top Party position. He has already established the precedent of being both chief of state and Party leader; he has matched Stalin in being promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union. By almost any standard, the past 15 years have to be regarded as his "era." Now the advancing age and physical infirmities of the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party suggest that a presuccession period is under way and that the process of summing up the Brezhnev period can begin.

William G. Hyland is a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University. He was a member of the National Security Council Staff from 1969 to 1977, serving as Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs, 1975-77.

Nevertheless, the defense share will loom as too inviting a melon to be ignored by the Politburo when resources become scarce and expensive, and there is a demand for investment to revive growth. Any sector commanding high quality resources and over ten percent of the economy is a tempting target. But the costs of challenging the defense establishment are even greater than tinkering with reforms. What new leader would try to consolidate a bid for power on a platform of reducing defense? True enough, both Khrushchev and Brezhnev, for brief periods, did take that position. In Khrushchev's case he kept toying with the defense establishment, but Brezhnev eventually unleashed it. Given the respective political fate of each, a successor is not likely to take on the added burdens of a quarrel with the military. The most we could expect would be limiting its growth to somewhat slower rates, which over time, of course, could have some significance.

In short, one can foresee a leadership more or less tied to conservative elements, doomed to maneuver within narrow limits, caught up in an economic crisis but unable to adopt policies that would constitute a decisive solution.

In such circumstances, a new leadership might be tempted to make up for its domestic problems with foreign successes. Certainly, the paradox of the U.S.S.R. is that it has created enormous military strength, but has not been able to translate this strength into permanent political gains-either through confrontation or détente. Reflecting on the 1970s, it may be that a new leader will conclude that his predecessors were too timid, too hesitant or too erratic. After all, the Soviet Union could insist on certain "rights" as a superpower; but the situation that actually evolved in the 1970s found the U.S.S.R. faced by a tentative alliance of all the major power centers: Europe, America and Japan holding the key to much-needed technology, and all three developing lines to China, the U.S.S.R.'s "main" enemy.

A new leader may conclude that the Soviet Union should indeed claim its place in the sun. Unaffected by the World War II experience and only vaguely aware of the period of Soviet weakness in the 1930s and 1940s, a new generation might be willing to press its claims with much less regard for risks, with greater persistence and determination but resting its policy on a solid foundation of military power. If, in fact, the United States and NATO do embark on a program of remedial military measures by the early 1980s and if China continues with its modernization plans, then there might be the added hazard that a Soviet leadership could also conclude that time was running out, and that the optimal moment for a geopolitical breakthrough had arrived.

This is not to say, of course, that the Soviet Union will seek war or act recklessly. Rather, the Soviet calculation of the balance of forces will probably seem favorable and a new leadership, perhaps younger and more vigorous, may have the imagination required to turn this calculation to the U.S.S.R.'s advantage.

Yet there are some factors working against the early emergence of such a policy. First, there is the likelihood that any new leadership, after the passing of the Brezhnev generation, will not have much experience in foreign affairs. For a time Khrushchev deferred to Molotov, and Brezhnev allowed Kosygin to conduct foreign affairs for a few years after 1964. But an inexperienced leadership will be only a temporary state of affairs.

A second and more fundamental inhibition will be the degree to which the Soviet Union is tied into the global economy. Present trends suggest that for a long period the U.S.S.R. will need to import technology, grain and perhaps even oil. The sources of technology-the United States, Japan and Western Europe-are also, of course, the main victims of any Soviet effort to establish a predominant global position. These countries thus will have it within their power to shape Soviet policy choices in a succession period, but only if they are prepared to go beyond a commercial policy and to regard their economic strength as a means of influencing the U.S.S.R.'s foreign policy. And the United States must reexamine the aims of the Jackson-Vanik and Stevenson prohibitions against trade and credits.

Third, there is the probability that trends in strategic and regional military balances will be perceived by Brezhnev's successors in Moscow as progressively more favorable in the 1980s, so as to permit them ever greater freedom of action in exploiting local crises or opportunities, especially in the vital areas of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. If this should be the case, then the most difficult period for the West is still some years away (when the succession settlement may still be open). Unfortunately, those perceptions are being affected by American decisions taken now-whether in the growing debate over defense, or the fate of SALT II, or the question of economic relations.

And this raises one of the most difficult tactical problems: how to conduct Western policy in a succession period. Should we make concessions to Brezhnev to block more dangerous policies, or do we thereby contribute to the emergence of such policies? Or should we simply wait for a clear change in leaders? In 1953, Churchill sensed confusion and uncertainty in the Kremlin and began a campaign to bring the new Soviet leaders to the negotiating table; the Soviets were apprehensive and John Foster Dulles and President Eisenhower were skeptical and wanted to build up Western strength. It may be that a major opportunity was lost, and that the process could repeat itself.

The West is correctly concerned about growing Soviet strength and has begun what may be its own rearmament program. We are increasingly suspicious of promises of Soviet change in the distant future, and we cannot paralyze our policy by subjecting it to the vagaries of Kremlin politics. What we seem to face is the necessity of a dual policy: in the near term to strengthen our position in anticipation of a period of potential challenge in the early to mid-1980s (and perhaps thereby deter the challenge), but to leave open the option of accommodation that might prove attractive to a Soviet leadership that will face the fundamental internal problems that are certain to appear in the late 1980s.