Reagan-Gorbachev III

William G. Hyland

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1987

Summary:  Written in anticipation of the third summit and the signing of the INF treaty, concludes that Gorbachev has adopted a basically defensive strategy and seems prepared to settle for a prolonged stalemate in terms of strategic superiority to the USA. This leads him to seek arms control agreements as a means of codifying his assumptions about security and the nuclear relationship. Washington's policy of selective containment is balanced by Moscow's policy of selective commitment.

William G. Hyland is Editor of Foreign Affairs.

We are entering the fourth major period in which some progress toward settling our rivalry with the Soviet Union is possible. Since World War II there have been three moments for such progress: after Stalin died in 1953, after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and during the 1969-1972 period of détente. Each period yielded some progress, and consequently the conflict has become less volatile. But each period ended in failure. It is this inability to stabilize the relationship that is dangerous and that challenges the current American and Soviet leaderships.

For American policy, Gorbachev is a complicating factor. There is a strong temptation in the United States to "help" him because he presents himself as a liberal reformer?which in fact he may well be. Moreover, a good case can be made, as Andrei Sakharov does, that Gorbachev may be the last best hope, lest a far more ruthless regime take over. But this cannot be a basis for Western policy. Gorbachev may be in power for a month, or for decades. He may abandon his reforms and become another Brezhnev, or like Khrushchev challenge the West dangerously as his domestic position weakens. What the West needs to survive these potential twists and turns is a general strategy that recognizes that there indeed are domestic changes under way in the Soviet Union, but tempers that recognition with a hardheaded assertion of Western security requirements. We should help Gorbachev only if we thereby help ourselves.

American policymakers cannot risk waiting for history to transform the conflict with the Soviet Union. In the nuclear era the United States must make some progress toward a settlement, even if only a partial one. This means a greater reliance on politics and diplomacy, and diplomacy that goes beyond the prevailing obsession with arms control.

The first objective for America is to create the circumstances that will make it difficult for the Soviet Union to resume the offensive if and when Gorbachev or his successors have rebuilt Soviet power. In the near term, this approach rests on the assumption that Gorbachev still wants a "breather" in world affairs. But the United States has to be clear about his purposes; he wants to gain time to "reconstruct" Soviet power in all of its dimensions. It is the task of Western strategy to make him pay a price for this interlude?a price that provides for strategic stability and the settlement of regional conflicts.

To deal effectively with the Soviet Union we must realize that much more is involved than developing clever schemes to solve the latest problem. The starting point has to be the clear recognition of the source of strength of our international position?our alliance with Europe and Japan. For some reason we refuse to learn how to live with the undeniable success of American foreign policy since World War II. Despite all the setbacks, failures and outright catastrophes, the Western cause has grown in strength. Few alliances have been more successful than NATO; rarely have major powers so quickly put the animosities of a great conflict behind them. And rarely has one of the victorious powers come to dominate the world to the extent that the United States has. The United States must continue to support and lead a powerful coalition of forces to contain the Soviet Union, but it will have to do so in an era vastly different from the period of the coalition?s creation.

We have won the ideological war; we are close to winning the geopolitical contest in the Third World, except for the Middle East. We long ago won the economic competition. As James Reston remarked in his final regular column for The New York Times: "I think we?ve won the cold war and don?t know it."

Yet there remains a nearly irresistible strain of isolationism in America. This is reflected in the continuing concern in the United States with altering the Atlantic alliance and withdrawing from Europe. We must resist the periodic temptation to tinker with a successful alliance, to play with various forms and types of American involvement. There is nothing more encouraging to the Soviet leaders in their time of troubles than the hope that sooner or later the United States will disengage from Western Europe. The struggle for the mastery of Europe, to paraphrase the British historian A.J.P. Taylor, continues, and will continue as long as the Soviet Union remains one of Europe?s great powers. The balance of world power could still be changed by shifts in this vital area. Preserving the European alliance must remain the cornerstone of American policy.

Maintaining an anti-Soviet coalition has become more complicated by our tentative alliance with China; the natural course for Sino-American relations would be to move toward a closer military relationship. But while we cannot grant Moscow a veto over American policy, the American connection to China needs to be handled with extreme care. We have limited mutual interests with China (whether that country "modernizes" or not) beyond the common opposition to Moscow; and the Sino-Soviet relationship will undoubtedly be subject to fluctuations as both the Soviets and Chinese try to moderate their strategic differences. The new generation of Soviet leaders will seek greater flexibility in Sino-Soviet relations. And sooner or later there will be a new generation in power in Beijing that will not have experienced the clashes with Moscow of the 1960s and 1970s. All of this, in turn, will be unsettling for Washington unless we accept the limits to our relations with China.

A successful alliance policy cannot ignore the fact that the industrial democracies will not support a foreign policy that does not include an effort at détente with the Soviet Union. Our Western allies and Japan obviously want both containment and coexistence. This may even be the basis on which the Chinese are prepared to join with the United States. In practice this means that the United States has to engage in negotiations with Moscow, including arms control arrangements, not only for the sake of our alliances but because it is also in our own self-interest.

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