U.S.-Soviet Relations: The Long Road Back

William G. Hyland

From Foreign Affairs, America and the World 1981

Summary:  American presidents have usually inherited poor relations with the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower, of course, was confronted by the tensions of Korea and President Kennedy by the Berlin crisis. Lyndon Johnson was a temporary exception, but Richard Nixon inherited Vietnam and the Czech crisis. Gerald Ford had to deal with a faltering détente, and Jimmy Carter was embroiled in early disputes. In January 1981, Ronald Reagan found himself in much the same position as his predecessors, except that relations were worse than usual. Indeed, relations were frozen. Even the outgoing Administration was pessimistic. The departing American Ambassador to the U.S.S.R., Thomas J. Watson, Jr., summed up the prevailing gloom: "I don't think the West has any conception of how dismal the future looks for East-West relations."

William G. Hyland is currently a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He served in the Department of State in 1974-75 and as Deputy Director of the National Security Council Staff from 1975 to 1977.

American presidents have usually inherited poor relations with the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower, of course, was confronted by the tensions of Korea and President Kennedy by the Berlin crisis. Lyndon Johnson was a temporary exception, but Richard Nixon inherited Vietnam and the Czech crisis. Gerald Ford had to deal with a faltering détente, and Jimmy Carter was embroiled in early disputes. In January 1981, Ronald Reagan found himself in much the same position as his predecessors, except that relations were worse than usual. Indeed, relations were frozen. Even the outgoing Administration was pessimistic. The departing American Ambassador to the U.S.S.R., Thomas J. Watson, Jr., summed up the prevailing gloom: "I don't think the West has any conception of how dismal the future looks for East-West relations."

The incoming Administration, of course, was not likely to contest this appraisal, though its members analyzed the causes quite differently. They believed that Carter's reaction to the "most brazen imperial drive in history" by the Soviet Union had been too little and too late. The new President immediately set a new tone when he asserted that the Soviets reserved the "right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat." Other pronouncements from the new Cabinet secretaries and their minions echoed the President, though not as crisply or dramatically.

The basic Reagan attitude toward the Soviet Union was no surprise: the President himself had enunciated it over many years; he had challenged the Ford presidency over détente, and had campaigned vigorously in 1980 on a strong anti-Soviet platform. Moreover, there was a large body of scholarly and political literature that buttressed and elaborated his general concept of the nature of the Soviet threat, its future direction, and the proper American response.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was seen by the Reagan Administration primarily as a military menace and only secondarily as an ideological and political adversary. This was because the appeal of the Soviet state as a model for development had long since declined. Most of Moscow's new clients claimed little ideological affinity with the theories of Marx or Engels and rejected the Stalinist economic monolith. They might appreciate Lenin's revolutionary tenacity or his organizational genius, but Leninism and Stalinism (or Brezhnevism) were remote from the conflicts in Angola of the Horn of Africa. In terms of economic performance, Moscow's influence would scarcely be spread on the basis of its superior agricultural achievements, and the forced industrialization model of the 1930s was irrelevant to the complexities of economic development in the 1970s and 1980s. The Soviet Union, of course, did have political weight. That was undeniable. And its patronage was valuable, whether measured in terms of potential protection in a regional crisis, votes at the United Nations, or material assistance.

Had this been the extent of the Soviet global threat, however, it would have been quite manageable with the traditional instruments of the 1970s and 1960s. But in the Reagan view, Soviet policy had gone well beyond geopolitical maneuvering. The U.S.S.R. had become a military giant. It was able and determined to project its power to distant areas, to intervene in regional military conflicts, to extend its position through a complex of foreign bases and a corps of proxy troops, and to seek and encourage new treaty relationships and regional alliances.

All of this, it was strenuously argued by the Reaganites, was a direct consequence of a significant shift in the balance of military power at every level. While America had allegedly put its confidence in the agreements and negotiations that comprised détente, the U.S.S.R. had not only failed to reciprocate, but had invested massive resources in its military establishment.

This accumulation of military power was not a product of the momentum of a massive bureaucracy. Rather, the Reaganites believed, it was a systematic and purposeful effort to meet the requirements laid down by Soviet doctrines which prescribed: (a) overall strategic superiority, (b) the necessity to prepare forces for both deterrence and actual warfighting, (c) the possibility of achieving victory in a general nuclear war, and (d) the decisiveness of striking first.

This analysis, despite the critical situation it suggested, did not cause the Administration to despair. For, on close examination, it could be seen that the fundamental underpinnings of the Soviet system were weakening-and this weakening was manifested in the accumulating internal and external crises. The Soviet state and Russian Communism had entered a historical decline.

Yet, it was argued that for the next few years this very trend was cause for even further apprehension. For if a Great Power saw that it had passed its zenith or soon would, and if that power was inherently aggressive and expansionist, it followed that it would desperately try to retrieve its historical fortunes through a series of forays and adventures. The Soviets, of course, were true believers in the "correlation of forces." History was predetermined in a broad Marxist sense, but the world position of the Soviet Union could be altered by skillful strategies and tactics, so long as the bedrock of massive military power remained unaffected. Thus, a unique and bizarre combination of strength and weakness made for a period of particular danger.

This was the challenge as seen by the Reagan Administration. As it was relatively simple and straightforward, so the American response had to be similarly simple and straightforward: