Foreign Affairs at 70

William G. Hyland

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1992

William G. Hyland leaves the editorship of Foreign Affairs with this issue.

The international political climate was tense in late 1984, as the American people approached yet another national election. Leonid Brezhnev was dead, but his successors had continued the confrontational policies that began in Afghanistan. Superpower relations were further aggravated by the Soviet walkout from arms control negotiations, after NATO had decided to deploy American Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe. Prospects for any improvement in the situation were discussed by Professor Robert W. Tucker:

An improved relationship between the two great nuclear powers is the precondition of virtually any significant measures of arms control. . . . Thus proposals for very deep cuts in nuclear arms?let alone for the abolition of these weapons?are idle unless they assume a relationship that has in all likelihood passed beyond the stage of a mere détente and has become something more intimate and promising. The prospects for this are such that they seem scarcely worth pausing over.

After President Reagan?s reelection U.S.?Soviet arms talks resumed, mainly because the Soviet leaders were becoming alarmed at the prospect of a domestic crisis combined with a foreign crisis. However, the direction of U.S. policy during Reagan?s second term was the source of continuing debate, centering around the old issue of détente. The division between the conservative right and the moderate center was summarized in Foreign Affairs by Norman Podhoretz, on the one hand, and by Leslie H. Gelb and Anthony Lake, on the other.

Podhoretz argued that Reagan risked abandoning the gains of his first term by making imprudent concessions to restore détente, in an effort to appease public opinion. Reagan "was more politician than ideologue," Podhoretz wrote:

This at least partly explains why Mr. Reagan in his first term failed to steer the nation away from the course of détente on which it had been moving since 1972 and toward a new strategy of containment aimed, just as the original conception of containment had been, at a prudent encouragement of the forces of disintegration already operating entirely on their own within the Soviet empire.

In contrast Gelb and Lake were encouraged by the perceived turnaround in Reagan?s outlook, and supported the resumption of diplomatic efforts, as opposed to what they saw as "an attitude of almost anti?diplomacy" during the first term. They concluded that President Reagan:

is almost uniquely in a position to bring American power to bear and get things accomplished. He has a better chance than any of his post World War II predecessors at quelling opposition from the right. He has succeeded in creating the impression that the United States has turned the tide against the Soviet Union in broad strategic terms.

This impression was reflected in Secretary of State George Shultz?s article in the Spring 1985 issue of Foreign Affairs.

The United States is restoring its military strength and economic vigor and has regained its self?assurance; we have a president with a fresh mandate from the people for an active role of leadership. The Soviets, in contrast, face profound structural economic difficulties and restless allies; their diplomacy and their clients are on the defensive in many parts of the world.

This sense of confidence in American power enabled the Reagan administration to advance new overtures for improving relations, especially bolder arms control proposals. Shultz called for "a strategy geared to long?term thinking and based on negotiation and strength simultaneously." The secretary saw more than the vindication of administration policy, but a broader triumph for Western values, and in an interesting premonitory remark, stated: