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.

On the one issue-ending the occupation of Afghanistan-where progress had at one time seemed to be a prerequisite. American policy under the new Administration proved increasingly indifferent. Lifting the grain embargo without any progress on Afghanistan was tantamount to writing an end to the policy of sanctions inaugurated by President Carter. Apparently some help has been flowing to the freedom fighters in Afghanistan, but on a modest scale. Washington has deferred too much to the Europeans and others who were pressing for a diplomatic solution on the dubious reasoning that the Soviet invasion had been a costly mistake that Moscow was eager to liquidate. Despite three separate U.N. condemnations, the U.S.S.R. suffered no lasting retribution, other than that inflicted on the field of combat. The resumption of arms control negotiations, the lifting of the grain embargo, and the gradual development of a high-level Soviet-American dialogue made the international condemnation of Soviet behavior irrelevant. Perhaps there is no solution. By the end of 1981, in any case, Afghanistan was well on its way to becoming the forgotten war. Whether the United States and its Western partners would eventually have to pay a price for this weakness remained to be seen.

Despite the withering away of the Afghan crisis as a major Soviet-American issue, the general impression was that little or no progress had been made on any of the major geopolitical issues dividing Washington and Moscow. The Soviet "threat" to the Persian Gulf remained, and American policy was increasingly oriented toward countering Soviet military action (e.g., operation Bright Star in Egypt, U.S.-Israeli "strategic cooperation," the provision of Saudi AWACS). Soviet influence among the more radical elements in the Middle East and Africa was growing, manifest in the new triple alliance of its clients, Libya, South Yemen and Ethiopia. Similarly its support for the Palestine Liberation Organization was demonstrably strengthened by the opening of an official representation in Moscow. For the first time since 1973 there was a possibility that the collapse of the Camp David process might lead to reentry of the U.S.S.R. in the diplomacy of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Moscow still provided the necessary support to Vietnam and the phony Cambodian regime. And, finally, the Soviet Union (and Cuba) and the United States seemed to be edging toward a serious confrontation over the Caribbean and Central America. The Soviets were giving Nicaragua more and more political and material support, including new arms shipments through Cuba. And the United States seemed intent on drawing a line against Cuban encroachments.

The potential for conflict, thus, remains high. But in one area Soviet-American strains might have actually been slightly reduced-China. The new Administration did, of course, carry the old policies a step further by openly (though in a confusing manner) offering to supply some arms and new technology to China during Secretary Haig's visit in June 1981. By the time it occurred, the Soviets had probably largely discounted the move. Gromyko (on August 8) said Moscow could not "remain indifferent," but China was not even mentioned in the litany of complaints to visiting American senators a few weeks later. Yet the underlying Soviet apprehensions must still be there.

American underwriting of a Chinese military buildup with what Gromyko called "up-to-date American weapons" could not be accepted in Moscow. But this no longer seemed likely, at least not in the short run. China was worried about the resolution of the new Administration, and was engaged in its usual maneuvering. The dispatch of a Chinese military mission to Washington was repeatedly and deliberately delayed. The reason, clearly, was that Peking wanted to pressure Washington to back away from its commitments to Taiwan. The U.S.S.R., ever sensitive to the nuances of triangular politics, responded with a new offer to settle the Sino-Soviet border dispute. While this particular issue remains dormant, the Chinese have moved to reopen border negotiations with India. The signal seems clear. The door to the Soviet Union was not slammed tightly shut. The real target of this Chinese maneuver, however, was Washington's nerves.

IV

In his message to Leonid Brezhnev on September 22, President Reagan indicated that one objective of American policy would be "to expand trade and to increase contacts at all levels of our societies." (This was before the imposition of martial law in Poland and the announcement of economic sanctions by the President.) But, in any case, American and Western policy toward trade and other economic relations with the East was a shambles-which the Polish crisis illuminated. A decade ago it was generally believed that economic relations would be a key, if not the key, to a political accommodation with Moscow. This theory was tried briefly during the period of détente, when an expansion of the scope of economic relations was held out as an incentive for better political relations. Over the past ten years, however, in the United States the policy has undergone an almost complete turnaround. Now, economic relations are seen primarily as a punitive sanction.

Thus Secretary Haig on July 28 testified that "our trade relations and our broader economic relations must reinforce our efforts to counter the Soviet military buildup and its irresponsible conduct. . . ." He announced that as a result of a policy review, the United States had concluded that tightening of restrictions on "goods and technology which could upgrade production in areas relevant to Soviet military strength was both desirable and necessary." The problem was that before this policy review the Administration had already damaged its own rationale by lifting the grain embargo on April 24. Its claim at that time that its position could not be "mistaken" by the Soviets was a weak one.

But probably of more long-term significance, the Administration failed to obtain an allied consensus at the Ottawa economic summit. Even the Secretary of State had to acknowledge that "Some countries have more extensive commercial links with the East than the United States, and others believe that economic ties moderate political behavior." Finally, it was fairly clear that the use of economic relations as a retaliatory measure was far from agreed Western policy. Thus, when the Polish crisis broke in December 1981, Western policy was in disarray.

The weaknesses of the Western approach were nowhere more evident than in the abortive American effort to stave off the much publicized European-Soviet natural gas agreements that were finally consummated on November 20, just before Leonid Brezhnev visited Bonn. To be sure, the United States had a complicated hand to play. The United States had justified lifting grain sanctions on the very theory-commercialism-that the Reagan Administration was now arguing against with the Europeans. It thus found itself in the difficult position of proposing that the Europeans should make economic sacrifices lest they create a political dependency on Moscow, when the United States was selling over 23 million tons of grain to the Soviet Union and extending for one year the grain sales agreement of 1976.

Even the relevant security warnings against Soviet blackmail potential carried no great weight. The overall West German dependency on the Soviet Union for energy supplies (five percent) was not nearly as great as the European dependency on oil imports from the Middle East (or the U.S. dependency, for that matter). In any case, the growing web of economic relationships between East and West raised a serious question for American policy: could the United States afford to stand on the sidelines criticizing and carping while this relationship developed? Or should it modify its own position as the basis for attempting to forge a new Western consensus? The crisis over Polish sanctions made such a consensus mandatory.