US-Soviet Relations: Beyond the Cold War?Author(s): Phil WilliamsReviewed work(s):Source: International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 65, No. 2(Spring, 1989), pp. 273-288Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Royal Institute of International AffairsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2622072 .Accessed: 16/11/2011 05:34

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US-Soviet relations: beyond the Cold War?

PHIL WILLIAMS:

President Reagan came to office in 1981 as an enthusiastic Cold Warrior determined to restore American power and pre-eminence and to show the Soviet Union that it could not embark upon expansionist policies without paying a very high price. He left office in 1989 as the co-architect of a new superpower detente. It was not called that, of course, as the idea of detente was still associated with America's period of malaise in the 1970s, when both foreign policy and domestic politics were in disarray after Watergate, Vietnam and the Iran hostage crisis. But the antipathy that had characterized Soviet-American exchanges in the early 1980s had been replaced by a relationship that was less acrimonious and much more cordial.

A series of summit meetings between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev had culminated in the Washington summit of December 1987 at which the INF Treaty, removing all land-based medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe, was signed. In June 1988 President Reagan visited Moscow, and although little of substance emerged from this summit the symbolic importance of a visit to the centre of what Reagan, only a few years earlier, had called the 'evil empire' was immense. Although the superpowers found it impossible to reach an agreement on long-range arms reductions (START) before Reagan left office, it was clear that they had entered another period of relaxation in which they were increasingly willing to take steps to moderate and regulate their relationship and to cooperate on security issues. What had occurred was effectively detente by another name.

What remains uncertain, of course, is whether the Reagan-Gorbachev detente is sustainable. Is it just another phase in the old cyclical pattern in which the superpowers pass from periods of Cold War to detente and back again? Or does it represent a more fundamental and long-term trend in the evolution of US-Soviet relations from confrontation to cooperation? In short, is the Cold War finally over?

It may be tempting to dismiss such questions as premature and ill-conceived. There have been thaws in the Cold War before, but they have been succeeded by periods of renewed tension between the superpowers. The 'spirit of Camp David' of 1959, for example, when Khrushchev visited the United States for talks with Eisenhower, was followed by one of the most dangerous periods in the Cold War, with the superpowers confronting each other over Berlin and Cuba. Similarly, the detente of the 1970s gave way to a renewed period of tension in which the two sides abandoned cooperative ventures for a more confrontational approach. Although the rhetorical belligerence of Moscow and Washington was not matched by recklessness on either side, the superpower relationship in the first half of the 1980s was characterized by a degree of mutual paranoia and hostility that many found extremely disturbing.

:- Phil Williams is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Southampton. During 1988-9 he is head of the International Security programme of the RIIA. His most recent book is, with Mike Bowker, a study of Superpower detente: a reappraisal (London: Sage for RIIA, 1988). 0020-5850/89/2/273-16 $3.00 (C 1989 International Affairs

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It is of course possible that the cyclical pattern will continue, and that the detente of the late 1980s marks no real change in international relations but will give way to another period of recrimination and tension. On the other hand, the new detente may prove more enduring than the old. There may be structural changes taking place in the international system, as well as changes in Soviet and American perceptions of each other, that will strengthen and perpetuate detente this time around. This is not to deny that other developments are possible which at the very least will challenge detente and may undermine it. In the past, superpower detente proved vulnerable to unexpected events, to instability in Eastern Europe and to crises in the Third World. It was also challenged by domestic critics-who clung to an 'inherent bad faith' model of the adversary and were therefore sceptical about moves towards accommodation. Conciliatory gestures by the Soviet Union were treated in the United States as exercises in deception meant to lower US defences. It is therefore likely that each side's detente policies will be matters of contention and controversy in Washington and Moscow. The outcome of these internal debates will help to determine the balance of what Kjell Goldmann has called detente 'stabilizers' and 'destabilizers'.1

This article aims to answer the question whether the detente of the 1980s and 1990s is qualitatively different from earlier postwar cycles of detente followed by tension. It first gives an analysis of the detente of the 1970s, under Nixon, Kissinger and Carter, and explains how and why it ended in disillusion and renewed superpower tension. It then compares the current warming of superpower relations with the experience of the 1970s and highlights what is new about the developments of the 1980s. Finally, it discusses the detente 'stabilizers' and 'destabilizers' which could propel superpower relations either towards accommodation or towards a resurgence of mutual antipathy and renewed tension.

But first it is necessary to consider the nature of the superpower relationship since the end of the Second World War.

The nature of the superpower relationship

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is often seen as an ideological struggle between two antithetical political systems, each of which is intolerant of the values, objectives and policies of the other. Against this, I will argue that superpower rivalry is a function not of internal politics but of systemic factors, and that the main explanation of the Cold War can be found in the bipolar structure of the international system which emerged from the upheaval of the Second World War, and which made it impossible for the superpowers to avoid being adversaries.

The logic of bipolarity is compelling. In a world dominated by two great powers, it matters little whether they are Athens and Sparta or the Soviet Union and the United States-their hostility is determined by the imperatives of security in an anarchic and bipolar international system and does not depend on malevolence on either side. Even if their intentions towards each other are initially benign, the two great powers are stuck in a security dilemma in which actions taken by one for defensive purposes appear as threatening, aggressive or expansionist to the other. The result is a series of self-fulfilling prophecies in which defensive actions provoke countermeasures that confirm and intensify the original fears.

1. Kjell Goldmann, Change and stability in foreign policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

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The United States and the Soviet Union could not help but perceive each other as rivals . . . since for each one the other was the only state in the system that posed a serious military threat to its own security or to smaller states whose independence or affiliation was deemed essential to that security. Ideological conflict had little to do with this basic identification although it did exacerbate the resulting antagonism.2

The security dilemma is of course inherent in an anarchic international system with no overriding authority, but the bipolar structure made it particularly acute because it gave it a sharpness and intensity that are lacking when power is more evenly distributed.

Subsequently, the bipolar structure set limits to the possibilities for sustained accommodation. Although nuclear weapons provided an incentive for moderating and regulating the superpower competition, so long as the system remained bipolar it was impossible for the superpowers to escape from the security dilemma.

If differences in the social, political and economic systems of the two major actors are secondary, however, they are certainly not irrelevant. They are particularly important in explaining the tendency of policy-makers in Moscow and Washington to attribute the Cold War exclusively to the adversary. Where the structural factors are overlaid by ideological antipathies, the consequences can be very serious. As Alexander George has pointed out, 'Ideology severely exacerbates these difficulties [the effects of the security dilemma] by creating among political leaders and their publics an idealized self-image and an invidious image of the opponent.'3 Paradoxical- ly, another result of ideology is that it renders policy-makers and publics less sensitive to the security dilemma and to the concerns of the other side, so that the legitimate needs of the adversary are ignored and the possibility that he is acting out of concern for his own security is discounted. Instead, both sides tend to adopt what Ken Booth and Nicholas Wheeler have called 'strategic fundamentalism', in which the conflict is attributed almost exclusively to the malevolent nature of the adversary.4

Such a pattern is clearly evident in Soviet-American relations since 1945. Superpower competition has been characterized by an excess of self-righteousness on both sides and a reluctance to acknowledge what Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out in the early part of this century: that in any conflict between two parties there are at least six parties involved-the two as they see themselves, the two as they see each other and the two as they really are. Policy-makers in both Washington and Moscow have interpreted Soviet-American relations as a Manichean struggle between the powers of light and the powers of darkness. In fact, a more apt description is that of two powerful states blundering about in the dark with little knowledge or understand- ing of each other's perspective, sensitivities and problems. This lack of knowledge and empathy has exacerbated the security dilemma.

Ideology also acts as an important device in mobilizing domestic support for competitive policies. One result is that in certain circumstances policy-makers may find themselves with less flexibility than they desire. In other words, ideological antipathies not only intensify the security dilemma, but they can also prolong its

2. G. H. Snyder and P. Diesing, Conflict among nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 420.

3. A. L. George, 'Factors influencing security cooperation', in A. L. George, P. J. Farley and A. Dallin, eds., US-Soviet security cooperation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 658.

4. See N. J. Wheeler and Ken Booth, 'Beyond the security dilemma: technology, strategy and international security', in C. K. Jacobsen, ed., The uncertain course (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 313-37, esp. p. 337.

276 US-SOVIET RELATIONS: BEYOND THE COLD WAR?

effects, making attempts at cooperation more difficult to initiate and relaxation more difficult to sustain. Domestic politics themselves can inhibit change. Indeed, it is possible for shifts to occur in the distribution of power in the international system, while policy-makers and publics still continue to base their policies on outmoded assumptions.

None of this precludes the possibility that there can be temporary improvements in Soviet-American relations. The difficulty arises in maintaining these improvements.

How is this illustrated by the experience of the 1970s?

An attempt that failed: the detente of the 1970s

The detente of the 1970s arose from a coincidence of Soviet and American interests in improving relations. Underlying an apparent convergence of interests, however, was a more complex situation in which each side's constraints were the other's opportuni- ties, and in which each superpower had a 'hidden agenda' based on the desire to exploit the adversary's difficulties and dilemmas. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there was considerable tension-and ultimately a profound incompatibility-between the Soviet and American conceptions of detente.

Whereas the United States saw detente as an attempt to persuade the Soviet Union to engage in self-containment, and therefore as being about restraint, the Soviet Union saw detente and arms control as being about equality. It wanted equal status with the United States which, in practice, meant an equal right to project power in the Third World-the very thing that the United States wanted to inhibit. Although Moscow saw no inconsistency between detente and its support for national liberation movements in the Third World, the United States saw such support as violating detente. Differing and potentially incompatible interests were thus overlaid by divergent conceptions of what was or was not legitimate behaviour within the detente framework. In other words, the demise of detente was inherent in its origins and conceptions.

Because of this, detente did nothing to inhibit the operation of the security dilemma or to alter the fundamental suspicion with which each superpower regarded the other. The major concerns arose in the United States, and were precipitated by two related aspects of Soviet behaviour during the detente period.

The first was the continued build-up of Soviet strategic forces. Although the United States did not in fact opt out of the strategic arms race, as claimed by those who contend that the 1970s were a 'decade of neglect', the deployment of new Soviet missiles after the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) agreement of 1972 generated concerns that Moscow was not content with strategic parity and was aiming for strategic superiority. In this sense, the breakdown of detente stemmed-to paraphrase Thucydides-from the rise of Soviet power and the fear this caused in the United States.

This fear was intensified by a second feature of Soviet behaviour: widespread activism in the Third World. In fact, neither superpower refrained from competitive strategies in the Third World in this period; it was simply that, with the very important exception of the Middle East, the Soviet Union was more successful than the United States. This spilled back into the US domestic debate and President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, encouraged worst-case assessments by linking a series of widely disparate events in his notion of an 'arc of crisis'. The Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, was much less alarmist about Soviet gains in the Third World,

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contending that they would be limited by local and nationalist forces. In the event Vance lost the battle within the Carter administration. This was not

entirely surprising. Vance was challenging the perceptual dimensions of the security dilemma in suggesting that the United States did not need to be overly concerned about Soviet actions. His arguments appeared to be complacent about the Soviet Union and were not persuasive within the foreign policy-making establishment or to a public in which hostility towards the Soviet state was deeply entrenched-they were a challenge to the logic of bipolarity. Soviet actions were deemed particularly threatening because President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger had 'oversold' the change in superpower relations to the American public, presenting detente as a fundamental departure from the Cold War. When Cold War patterns of behaviour continued to be apparent, the reaction of the US public therefore combined concern over Soviet advances with a belief that Moscow had betrayed the principles of detente.

Such critics as Senator Henry Jackson, of course, had never accepted that detente was anything other than a Soviet tactic designed to lull the United States into a false sense of security. In the view of Jackson and other opponents of detente, the nature of the Soviet state had not changed fundamentally, as was evident in Soviet policy restricting Jewish emigration. Although the emigration issue had domestic political advantages for Jackson, it was in effect a touchstone of beliefs about the Soviet Union-a reaffirmation of strategic fundamentalism. Whereas Kissinger believed that a skilful American policy based on the manipulation of inducements and penalties could give the Soviet Union a vested interest in restraint, Jackson wanted evidence of internal change in the Soviet Union before he was willing to compromise. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Carter administration's efforts to legitimize the detente policy failed. The anti-detente network in Washington was victorious in 1979 both in the debate over SALT II and in the furore over an alleged Soviet combat brigade in Cuba. The result of all this was that detente was more or less dead even before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.

The Soviet invasion and the US response provide a classic example of the security dilemma in action. Military measures taken by one superpower because of concerns over security were interpreted by the other as threatening. The initial US reaction was to see Afghanistan as the culmination of the geopolitical offensive which the Soviet Union had embarked upon in the 1970s, as well as to regard it as a move which threatened Western interests in the Gulf.

Although these concerns were greatly exaggerated, they were not unfounded. Policy-makers have to be concerned with the consequences of actions rather than the intentions which lay behind them-and if Afghanistan had been subjugated by Soviet forces, the Soviet Union would have been in a more advantageous position in relation to the- Gulf, irrespective of whether this was in fact the initial purpose of military intervention.

For the strategic fundamentalists in the United States, of course, Afghanistan simply provided confirmation of their beliefs about Soviet expansionism. The Soviet action also brought President Carter into line with the national mood in the United States and marked the return to Cold War policies in Washington. The big change in US policy did not in fact come with the presidential transition from Carter to Reagan, but took place during the last 13 months of the Carter administration. Reagan was simply a more enthusiastic Cold Warrior. The irony is that he was a Cold Warrior who subsequently pursued a policy of detente.

How then has the experience of the 1980s differed?

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The 1980s: what's new?

It is ironic that President Reagan, who in 1976 had claimed that the main accomplishment of detente was 'the acquisition of the right to sell Pepsi-Cola in Siberia'5 and who was to describe the Soviet Union in March 1983 as an 'evil empire', should come to preside over a new and perhaps more enduring attempt to moderate and regularize the superpower relationship. This shift can be explained in terms of flexible leadership, the changing balance of forces within the administration, and domestic pressures, as well as by the desire to respond to the new opportunities offered by the coming to power of a new and more conciliatory Soviet leader.

Flexibility and change

The change in US policy towards the Soviet Union during the mid-1980s was all the more surprising because it appeared to run counter to President Reagan's ideological beliefs and a deeply engrained strategic fundamentalism as well as the sustained anti-Soviet rhetoric of the administration. But the tendency of some commentators to see the President as unalterably opposed to any compromise with Moscow over- estimated his rigidity. Such views also overlooked the fact that the President was not irrevocably opposed to detente in principle-simply to what had been regarded as one-sided detente on Soviet terms. As early as 1983, the Reagan administration was saying that, having rebuilt US strength, it wanted to 'engage the Soviet leaders in a constructive dialogue'.6 From the outset, however, the priority and sequence were clear: regeneration of American power was the first priority, and constructive dialogue could only occur after this had been achieved. This was consistent with strategic fundamentalism. The idea was that the Soviet Union would respond positively to hard-line policies. The emphasis on negotiation from strength was also an important legitimizing device which helped to neutralize domestic critics and opponents of accommodation with the Soviet Union.

If Reagan himself was more flexible than at first appeared, there were those within the administration who opposed this flexibility. The move towards a new detente can be seen in part as the outcome of a political struggle within the second Reagan administration between two competing groups-the conservative pragmatists, like Secretary of State George Shultz, who wanted to negotiate with the Soviet Union, and the more hawkish conservative ideologues, like Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger and Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs Richard Perle, who wanted to continue to 'squeeze' the Soviet Union through an intensified arms race and a policy restricting technology transfer. With the departure of Perle from office in 1987, the 'dealers' effectively won the battle for the soul of the second Reagan administration.7

They were helped by the emergence of powerful domestic pressures which effectively underlined the problems inherent in the squeeze strategy. Reagan faced enormous difficulties when his policies were seen as too ambitious and too bellicose, especially by a Congress which John Gaddis has described as 'curiously impervious to

5. Quoted in G. Ford, A time to heal (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 373. 6. See M. Froman, 'The development of the idea of detente in American political discourse, 1952-1985'

(Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1988), pp. 270-1. 7. The distinction between 'squeezers' and 'dealers' is made in A. Horelick and E. L. Warner III,

'US-Soviet nuclear arms control: the next phase', in A. L. Horelick, ed., US-Soviet relations: the nextphase (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 225-56.

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the logic of trying to exhaust the Russians by tripling our own national debt'.8 As well as setting limits to the squeeze strategy, the congressional and public mood worked in favour of the dealers. The belligerence of the first Reagan administration highlighted the dangers inherent in unqualified strategic fundamentalism and led some critics to argue that the United States should be more circumspect in its approach and avoid backing Moscow into a corner. In a way they were acknowledging that the superpowers were locked into the security dilemma and demanding that the United States be more sensitive to Soviet security concerns. While the Reagan administration did not accept this analysis, public pressure was an additional factor encouraging a reappraisal of US policy towards the Soviet Union.

This reappraisal coincided with a major change in Soviet leadership. Gorbachev's contribution to the change in Soviet-American relations was of immense importance. Not only did he introduce a new flexibility into Soviet policy, but his desire for a breathing space gave credence to the Reagan administration's argument that its policies had worked and had forced the Soviet Union to the bargaining table. In fact Gorbachev's desire for a more relaxed Soviet-American relationship seems to have arisen much more from domestic needs than international pressure. Nevertheless, it made it possible for the Reagan administration to adopt a more conciliatory approach without appearing overly conciliatory. Indeed, the Reagan administration consistently shied away from the concept of detente and generally used more modest language such as 'dialogue' to describe the improvements in US-Soviet relations. If this was detente by another name, however, it was still detente-and there are some extremely interesting contrasts with the detente of the 1970s.

Perhaps the most obvious point of contrast between the two periods is that the relaxation of tensions in the 1980s has not been presented or conceptualized in quite the same way as it was in the early 1970s. In the United States in particular, there is now a much greater degree of pragmatism about the new detente than there was under President Nixon and Henry Kissinger. In some respects the current situation could even be described as a policy of 'detente by default'. There is nothing like the elaborate conceptual underpinning for detente that was evident in the pronouncements of Kissinger and Nixon. Kissinger had enunciated a sophisticated rationale for the pursuit of detente, based on the need to bring the Soviet Union into a legitimate international order in which there was common acceptance of the limits of permissible behaviour. This international order was to be upheld by the United States' ability to offer incentives for Soviet good behaviour and impose penalties for Soviet transgressions. The problem was that Moscow did not share the Kissingerian conception of legitimate behaviour.

In view of this, the fact that the Reagan administration has not constructed a new rationale for detente is probably an asset. It has not oversold detente in the way the Nixon administration did, and there has been little talk of new structures of peace or of the era of confrontation giving way to the era of negotiation. Even if only implicitly, there seems to have been a recognition in the Reagan administration that the more modest the approach, the less chance there is for misunderstanding, disappointment and subsequent allegations of bad faith. This also means that detente has a better chance of being maintained by the next administration. In a way, Kissinger's

8. J. L. Gaddis, 'The evolution of US policy goals toward the USSR in the postwar era', in Seweryn Bialer and M. Mandelbaum, eds., Gorbachev's Russia and American foreign policy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988), p. 324.

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conception of detente was so elaborate that it needed Kissinger to implement it. After his departure from office the prospects for the policy diminished considerably.

On the Soviet side, there is perhaps more of a conceptual underpinning for the improvement in US-Soviet relations. Gorbachev's' 'new thinking' about interdepen- dence and reciprocal security has provided a powerful rationale for improved relations with the United States. The new thinking challenges both the pervasiveness of the security dilemma and the strategic fundamentalism that has dominated US assessments of the Soviet Union to date.

Yet Soviet pursuit of a moderated and regularized relationship is not dependent on the new thinking. Detente with the United States is clearly consistent with older notions of peaceful coexistence. Gorbachev has also provided a variant of the Stalinist concern with 'socialism in one country' with his emphasis on the creation of what might be called 'technological socialism in one country'.

There are, of course, important differences between the Stalin and Gorbachev approaches to modernization. For Stalin, modernization was something to be achieved through repression, insularity and autarky; for Gorbachev, it is to be done through domestic liberalization and restructuring and expanded trade with the West. Furthermore, Gorbachev's modernization programme goes well beyond the introduc- tion of new technologies to encompass the very basis on which social and political life in the Soviet Union is conducted. A breathing space in the competition with the West is a precondition for the achievement of these reforms and the creation of a viable economic and technological base for the long term. It is not simply the enunciation of new concepts such as security interdependence, therefore, but a hard-headed appraisal of the limits of Soviet power which lies at the heart of the Soviet pursuit of improved relations with the United States. In other words, the Soviet Union is the demandeur in the current superpower relationship. This is much more acceptable to the United States than a situation where Washington is in a poor bargaining position and needs detente more than the Soviet Union does.

The US national mood

A second difference is in the national mood of the United States. America at the end of the Reagan era is far more positive and optimistic than it was in 1980 at the end of the Carter presidency. The 1970s were a decade in which the United States felt itself to be in decline. Strategic superiority had given way to parity and Washington was concerned with managing the rise of Soviet power. There was a strong sense during the 1970s that a transition was taking place in the relative power and status of the two superpowers. Indeed, the American rejection of detente occurred in large part because detente became inextricably associated with notions of American decline. The Reagan administration changed this national mood, and did so through a variety of means: powerful rhetoric, the use of force against targets of convenience-in Grenada, Nicaragua and Libya-renewed emphasis on the modernization of US strategic forces and, perhaps most important of all, the Strategic Defense Initiative. Although the impact of these measures was heightened by the fact that they coincided with the Soviet leadership crisis following the death of Brezhnev and then Andropov, they were central to the administration's concern with 'standing tall' in the world again. Indeed, perhaps the most revealing element in the first Reagan administration's approach was its characterization of the 1970s as a decade of neglect. This implied that the decline of US power had been the result not of secular trends in the international system but of

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poor judgement and a lack of will in the administrations of the 1970s. The Reagan administration saw itself as changing all this.

The extent to which the administration has in practice halted or reversed the US decline is debatable. US military power, in particular, is not significantly greater now than it would have been if Jimmy Carter's defence budget projections had been followed. Furthermore, after the most sustained peacetime military build-up in history, the Pentagon now has to come to terms with the continuation of the old pattern of 'feast and famine' in defence spending.

Whatever the realities, though, the Reagan presidency clearly went a long way towards restoring American pride. In material terms, Reagan has done little to alter what may be an irreversible decline from the position of pre-eminence that the United States-by reason of a variety of temporary conditions-enjoyed from the late 1940s through to the mid-1960s. In psychological terms, though, Reagan was enormously successful. As well as a great communicator, Reagan was a great illusionist. At the end of the 1970s the talk was of malaise; at the end of the 1980s it is much more positive and confident. There is still a lurking fear that the United States is in decline, as evident in the interest generated by Paul Kennedy's recent work on The rise and fall of the great powers. 9 But there is nothing like the American crisis of confidence that was apparent at the end of the 1970s. The restoration of America's belief in itself provides a much more solid basis from which to deal with the Soviet Union. Though the United States still has to remedy its budget deficit, it is relatively confident in the knowledge that Soviet economic problems are of a greater order of magnitude.

The Third World competition

A third difference has been in the role of the competition in the Third World. A key element in the detente of the early 1970s was the attempt by Washington and Moscow to establish a crisis-prevention regime in the Third World-an endeavour enshrined in the Basic Principles Agreement of 1972 and the Prevention of Nuclear War Agreement of 1973. These accords were flawed, however-partly because the superpowers had very different conceptions of the kind of crisis they wanted to prevent. The United States in effect wanted a comprehensive regime of crisis avoidance designed to stop the Soviet Union taking advantage both of instability in the Third World and of US inability (because of domestic constraints) to compete effectively. The Soviet Union had a much more restrictive conception of crisis, and wanted to avoid only those situations likely to result in direct military confrontation. Anything below this was permissible.

In the late 1980s, the superpowers seem to be in much closer agreement about what is or is not appropriate behaviour in the Third World. In effect, both superpowers have adopted a more pragmatic and low-key approach to Third World upheavals. They have not attempted to establish formal codes of conduct with global applicability, but instead have used quiet diplomacy on a fairly regularized basis to deal with particular crisis regions. As a result we have seen the beginnings of strategic disengagement in the Third World. The Soviet decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was the beginning of this, and there has subsequently been considerable movement in other regions, such as southern Africa.

9. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.

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There is considerable room for disagreement about why this has occurred. Members of the Reagan administration attribute the change of approach in Soviet policy to the pressure that the United States placed on Soviet-supported regimes in the Third World through the 'Reagan Doctrine' (the policy of supporting counter-revolutionary guerrilla forces against communist governments around the globe). By supporting right-wing revolutionary movements against Soviet-backed regimes, it is argued, the administration changed the calculation of gains and losses being made in Moscow. But the Reagan Doctrine has not been implemented nearly as vigorously as its proponents hoped. Domestic constraints have limited the amount of aid given to anti-Soviet movements, and though the United States can claim some credit for the Soviet reappraisal, this should not be exaggerated.

It seems more likely that the less extensive involvement of the superpowers in the Third World at the end of the 1980s reflects the fact that both have learned from past experience. Although the United States has been more interventionist in the 1 980s than it was in the late 1970s under Carter, its interventions have largely been confined to targets of convenience. The one exception to this was Lebanon in the early 1980s-an experience which could only reinforce American desires to ensure that the experience of Vietnam was not repeated. And the Soviet Union has found that its geopolitical gains of the 1970s were a continual and irksome drain on resources. In addition, Moscow has realized that the problems of quelling militant nationalism are not peculiar to Western democratic states.

In short, at the end of the 1980s there is a far more symmetrical approach to Third World instability than there was in the 1970s. Both superpowers are restrained; each realizes that the adversary's appetite for Third World adventures has been assuaged. Not only does this contrast with the 1970s, but it provides the basis for the kind of reciprocal and comprehensive detente that Zbigniew Brzesinski demanded when enunciating his concept of 'linkage'. It also offers better prospects for at least tacit agreement on a crisis-prevention regime that could prove far more resilient than that of the 1970s. It is not simply that the superpowers realize the problems inherent in a formal declaratory approach, but that both Moscow and Washington have recognized that the Third World is resistant to superpower domination. This not only makes them reluctant to intervene themeselves, but may also enable them to become more relaxed about each other's activities. In these circumstances it might even be possible to move away from the 'zero-sum' conception of geopolitical competition.

From managerial to visionary arms control

A fourth difference between the 1970s and the late 1980s is in the kind of arms control agreements that the superpowers are seeking. The managerial arms control of the 1970s, which effectively set ceilings for the Soviet and American arms build-up, has been replaced by a much more visionary concept of arms reduction at both nuclear and conventional level. Because of the peculiarities of the counting rules agreed upon by Moscow and Washington, a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) will involve 25-30 per cent reductions, rather than the 50 per cent cuts generally claimed. Although reductions of this scale will not prevent continued modernization of Soviet and American strategic forces, the negotiations do imply that the superpowers are moving towards a more regularized and restrained arms competition than in the past. While there are still obstacles to a START agreement, as there is still disagreement about SDI, it seems likely that progress will be made under President Bush, even if more slowly

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than anticipated. Reagan's vision of a defensive astrodome over the United States is unlikely to elicit the same commitment from his successor, and Moscow and Washington may therefore be able to agree on some kind of reaffirmation (and possible modification) of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. At the same time, it is clear that Reagan and Gorbachev have established a vision of a nuclear-free world which, although unrealistic, has changed the parameters of the arms control debate. It is noteworthy too that the Soviet Union has moved a long way towards accepting US positions on arms control. This was especially evident in the INF agreement, where the Soviet Union accepted asymmetrical reductions in forces.

Though there are still many obstacles in the way of far-reaching arms control, therefore, the superpowers are in effect trying to transcend the security dilemma. By making their arms competition more predictable and achieving stability at lower levels of forces, they are trying to avoid a position where the advances of one side increase the concerns of the other and contribute significantly to a deterioration in their relationship. And this also seems to be the case in the deployment of weapons in the European theatre.

Detente in Europe

Indeed, the nature of detente in Europe is the fifth major difference. Both military blocs have made unilateral gestures of arms reductions in the past, but Gorbachev's announcement in December 1988 at the United Nations that the Soviet Union would be reducing its conventional forces by 500,000 men-removing six divisions from Eastern Europe-and restructuring Soviet forces towards a more defensive posture was of a different order from anything that had gone before. It also highlighted the extent to which the current detente in Europe is more ambitious than anything that preceded it.

In the 1970s, detente in Europe was about the normalization of East-West relations and the ratification of the territorial status quo. It dealt with the issues that had been left over from the end of the Second World War, and provided what was effectively a surrogate peace settlement. The European detente of the late 1980s and the 1990s will take this as its starting-point. There is talk of attempts to establish a relationship between NATO and the Warsaw Pact based upon notions of reciprocal or common security. Though the obstacles to negotiated arms reductions remain formidable, there may now be a serious attempt to restructure-though not to dismantle-the military confrontation in Europe, probably through a mixture of unilateral measures and negotiated agreements.

The Conventional Stability Talks due to open this spring promise, unlike the negotiations on Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions, which began in 1973 and yielded no tangible outcome, to do more than simply stave off unilateral reductions in the American military presence in Western Europe. The Stockholm Confidence- and Security-Building Measures Agreement of September 1986 began the process of enhancing military 'transparency' between the blocs, and this will almost certainly be developed and extended during the first half of the 1990s. The result could be a Europe in which fear of surprise atack and rapid offensive operations is considerably reduced, possibly even with both sides confident that they have what Congressman Les Aspin has termed 'actionable warning': a situation where aggression by the adversary would be so obvious that it would trigger such a rapid response that no advantage could be gained. In other words, there is an attempt not just at the nuclear but also at the

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conventional level to replace zero-sum concepts of security with reciprocal security arrangements in which the insidious fears surrounding the security dilemma could be contained.

Although it is not possible to eliminate the security dilemma, it can at least be mitigated. This is not to imply that nuclear weapons will cease to make an important contribution to stability in Europe, or that deterrence will cease to be necessary. It is simply to say that there are opporttinities to ensure that strategies of deterrence do not become provocative, rather than restraining.

Beyond the Cold War?

The future of Soviet-American detente will depend in large part on the balance between those factors which have a stabilizing and consolidating effect on the improved relationship, and pressures for a return to Cold War policies. These can be described respectively as 'stabilizers' and 'destabilizers'.

No analysis of these factors can claim to be exhaustive; and writers, as well as policy-makers, can fall victim to unexpected and sometimes unforeseeable events. Nevertheless, on the basis of Soviet-American relations since the late 1940s certain trends and developments can be identified which would help to propel superpower relations either towards accommodation or towards a resurgence of mutual antipathy and renewed tension.

Stabilizers: 1. System change

The most important single factor allowing and encouraging the superpowers to continue to move towards a less tense and more cooperative relationship is the changing.distribution of power and influence in the international system. This change offers considerable scope for continued improvement in US-Soviet relations. If Soviet-American rivalry in the past has been inevitable because of the bipolar structure of the international system, then changes in that structure will bring changes in the Soviet-American relationship.

It is not coincidental that the Cold War was at its most intense in the period from 1947 to 1962 when Soviet and American dominance of the international system was unquestioned and when there were no other contenders for the role of major enemy. The international system appeared to be one of 'tight bipolarity', with two opposing blocs clustered around the superpowers. The period was characterized by a superpower competition which was intense and extensive, and there was a belief in the United States, if not the Soviet Union, that commitments were interdependent. The result was that no distinction was made between core areas and interests on the one hand and peripheral areas and interests on the other.

This kind of thinking continued into the period of tentative detente of the middle and late 1960s and was clearly a major factor in the escalating US involvement in Vietnam. Vietnam, in turn-by highlighting the limits of American power and by undermining the domestic consensus on which the containment policy had been based-was a major factor in the US desire for a more far-reaching detente.

Other factors contributed to the effort to improve the relationship. By the late 1960s there had been a general loosening of bipolarity and a weakening of the bloc structure. France had opted out of NATO's integrated military structure, while what had seemed a monolithic Sino-Soviet bloc had dissolved into a major Sino-Soviet split. If bipolarity

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was challenged politically, however, it was reaffirmed militarily by the emergence of strategic parity. In these circumstances it was not surprising that the security dilemma, accentuated by strategic fundamentalism, undermined detente.

Today it is clear that there is an increasing fragmentation of power and influence and that, nuclear parity notwithstanding, the international system ofthe late 1980s and the 1990s is moving from bipolarity to polycentrism. It is a system which has appropriately been called 'bipolycentric'.10 The two superpowers remain the domi- nant military powers, but this dominance has been challenged by the resistance of the Third World to military intervention, as well as by an increasing levelling process in economic terms. The Soviet Union has now to engage in long-term radical reform if it is to have the material base to sustain its role as a superpower, while the rise of other power centres, especially Japan and Western Europe, poses an increasing economic challenge to the United States. Indeed, the Japanese economic threat may be more difficult for the United States to meet than the Soviet military threat. Mobilizing against a highly visible threat to national security is easier than mobilizing against a more subtle and insidious economic challenge from an allied state.

In other words, the international system is changing in ways which seem likely to facilitate superpower cooperation. At one level these changes can be regarded as simply giving the superpowers more margin to manoeuvre. In a world where bipolarity is gradually being replaced by multipolarity, the structural pressure for superpower rivalry is weakened. Where there are other threats to national well-being, the superpowers will be less preoccupied by each other. The changes could go beyond this, however. They could actively encourage Soviet-American cooperation. Insofar as the changing distribution of power is a challenge to both superpowers, they may see advantage in a concerted approach which aligns them against the emergent power centres or nouveaux riches states. Although there is nothing inevitable about this-and the superpowers could attempt to exploit each other's problems and hasten each other's decline-it is not inconceivable that they will opt to maximize their influence through greater cooperation.

System-level change, of course, will take effect to the extent that it is understood and assimilated into the thinking of policy-makers in Washington and Moscow. It is possible that a gap may develop between what I have argued are the emerging realities and policy-makers' willingness to accept and act on these realities. Change in the international system challenges traditional patterns of behaviour, and the policy adjustments it requires may be both painful and disruptive. Policy-makers will tend to cling to habits of thinking and familiar responses long after they have ceased to be appropriate.

2. Declining ideology But dissonance of this kind may be less likely in the 1990s because of a second stabilizing factor-the declining influence of ideology on both Soviet and American foreign policies. Though at first the Reagan administration seemed the most ideological US government for some time, increasingly it came to be pragmatic and calculating. The Bush administration is likely to be even more pragmatic-while Gorbachev seems tobe pursuing a foreign policy in which ideological shibboleths have no place.

10. By John Spanier; see C. S. Shoemaker and J. Spanier, Patron-client state relationships (New York: Praeger, 1984).

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Obviously, there has to be caution about this. Writers have proclaimed the 'end of ideology' before, only to have their hopes dashed. But there does seem to be a trend in this direction. The Soviet 'new thinking' about international relations, with its declared emphasis on interdependence and the need for cooperation between East and West, is a far cry from the traditional Soviet view, which saw the outside world as implacably hostile. Even more important, if they continue, the internal changes being made by Gorbachev could have a subtle but powerful impact on American thinking about the Soviet Union. Traditionally, US assessments of superpower rivalry have ignored or played down structural imperatives and have focused on the need to respond to the expansionist and aggressive designs of a state founded on an antithetical ideology and a totalitarian political system. I have argued above that the problem of Soviet-American relations has been defined, in effect, as the problem of the Soviet state. If glasnost continues, and if the Soviet system becomes less repressive and more transparent, the American image of the Soviet Union as a repressive ideological state bent on global domination could change-and with it the American perception of threat.

Gorbachev's foreign policy initiatives have been received particularly enthusiastic- ally in Western Europe. In the United States, however, as the experience of the 1970s demonstrated, the Soviet Union will be judged by its internal policies as much as its external actions. Nevertheless, the coincidence of change in the international system with Gorbachev's reforms will accentuate the possibilities for cooperation. It will be much easier, politically and emotionally, for the United States to cooperate with a Soviet Union which is sensitive towards human rights and more permissive in its attitudes towards Eastern Europe than a Soviet Union which is seen as repressive both internally and abroad.

Destabilizers Clearly there are possibilities for greater cooperation between the superpowers. But detente is vulnerable. Certain events or pressures could inhibit the development of detente, or even derail it completely and precipitate a return to Cold War between the superpowers.

1. Eastern Europe

One possible obstacle to sustained detente is turmoil and instability in Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe was the original locus of the Cold War, and has been a source of political neuralgia in the superpower relationship ever since. The region has been characterized by periodic outbreaks of unrest prompting either direct Soviet intervention, as in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, or indirect reassertion of control, as in Poland. It may be fortuitous that crisis in Eastern Europe has come at 12-year intervals-in 1956, 1968 and 1980. At a time when so many people are preoccupied with what will happen in Western Europe in 1992, it may be worth thinking about events that could occur in Eastern Europe, as well as likely Western reactions to them. Unrest occurs most often when repression is eased; and Gorbachev's reforms may stimulate more change in Eastern Europe than is comfortable for either East or West. The creation of a single European market by the European Community will act as a magnet, and this could encourage the states of Eastern Europe to develop their economic links with Western Europe in ways that might not be approved of in Moscow.

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It seems likely that Gorbachev will look for new ways of responding to instability in Eastern Europe, and that he will be more tolerant than his predecessors of diversity. Yet major unrest in the bloc could precipitate a serious challenge to his leadership. A firm and decisive response, possibly involving military intervention, could be the price Gorbachev would have to pay for retaining power. Such a possibility cannot be ruled out.

But even a Soviet military intervention in Eastern Europe some time in the 1990s need not derail detente permanently. The detente of the late 1960s was checked by the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the promulgation of the Brezhnev Doctrine, but after an interval it was back to business as usual. The problem would be the effect of Soviet military action in Eastern Europe on Western thinking. A major intervention to stifle the growing independence of an East European state would generate considerable scepticism in the West about whether the Soviet Union had really changed. It would certainly be ammunition to critics of detente, especially in the United States, who could claim that in the final analysis Gorbachev was no different from previous generations of Soviet leaders. As well as disrupting the attempt to achieve stability at a lower level of forces, a Soviet intervention in Eastern Europe would encourage a reaffirmation of strategic fundamentalism in the United States.

2. American domesticpolitics A second inhibitor is the existence of deeply entrenched suspicion of the Soviet Union on the American right. President Reagan's move away from strategic fundamentalism was regarded as a betrayal by those who remain sceptical about Gorbachev's ultimate objectives and see him not as a domestic reformer but as a challenge to the West-the first Soviet leader with subtlety and sophistication. The right has had several problems, however, not the least in the difficulty of challenging Reagan's credentials, especially as the administration displayed great skill in presenting its policies as the result of 'hanging tough' and forcing the Soviet Union to become more accommodating. NATO's INF deployment, it was argued, made the zero option possible, while SDI compelled the Soviet Union to accept the need for deep cuts in strategic offensive forces.

It appears that the peak of conservatism in the United States may have passed and that there is a move back to the centre. Having swung towards conservatism in the 1970s, the electorate seems to be moving back in the other direction-the pendulum effect of American politics. This is only to say that the hard conservative line, with its bellicose foreign policy, has less appeal in the late 1980s than it did at the end of the 1970s. But the hardliners should not be dismissed as unimportant. After all, Ronald Reagan was the first president since Richard Nixon who did not have Reagan to worry about-and George Bush does not have the same political standing as Reagan, especially among conservatives. A START agreement finalized by the new administra- tion, for example, would be more vulnerable to attack than a Reagan agreement would have been.

If the new detente is to be sustainable, then, it must be legitimized in the United States. That will not be easy, especially while the defence budget is likely to be suffering very considerable reductions. The United States has tended to oscillate between feast and famine in defence spending, and between wishful and worst-case thinking about the Soviet Union. Periods of famine accentuate American weakness and generate worst-case thinking, both because of the vulnerability they produce and as part of the attempt to mobilize domestic support for a new period of heavy

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investment in defence. For detente to be sustainable, therefore, Washington will have to transcend established patterns of foreign policy behaviour.

3. Instability in the Third World A third inhibiting factor would be outbreaks of instability in the Third World. Egypt's decision in 1973 to go to war with Israel was in part a protest against Soviet-American detente, which seemed to relegate the problems of the Middle East to a secondary position. It is not inconceivable that allies and clients of the superpowers will regard the new detente as a move towards condominium, and accordingly one which has to be resisted. Furthermore, much of the peace that was beginning to break out in the Third World towards the end of the 1980s owed as much to exhaustion as to skilful diplomacy or pressure from the superpowers. When the period of recuperation is over the Third World could once again become very volatile-and if it does, the limits of superpower influence will again be exposed. Patron-client relations are not simply relations of dominance and subordination. On the contrary, client states have proved enormously difficult to control-especially in the Middle East.

Only if each superpower is able to accept that the adversary is not completely in control of its clients and is not responsible for their actions, therefore, will it be possible over the long term to insulate Soviet-American detente from the vagaries of Third World unrest. The superpowers will have to recognize that bipolarity is over; and that the imposition of a Soviet-American template on local conflicts is neither desirable nor necessary.

The balance between detente stabilizers and inhibitors is of course uncertain. But several considerations suggest that the detente of the late 1980s could well be more sustainable than that of the 1970s. The most important consideration is the coincidence of structural change in the international system with internal change in the Soviet Union. Both types of change are necessary for superpower detente to be sustained; but neither is sufficient. The combination makes possible a transformation of Soviet- American relations: the changing distribution of power in the international system mitigates the security dilemma, while the Gorbachev reforms challenge the basic premises of strategic fundamentalism in the United States. This conjunction of circumstances offers Moscow and Washington an opportunity for a more sustained detente.

The superpowers may even go beyond this. The gradual erosion of bipolarity offers new opportunities for them to move from a mixed relationship of cooperation and conflict to a more cooperative approach. Insofar as both superpowers are in decline-compared to other leading states, at least-and despite the fact that the Soviet decline is the more serious, the United States and the Soviet Union may have a fundamental common interest which aligns them against emergent states and rising power centres. There is already evidence that the postwar international order is changing in very significant ways. The current crisis in Atlanticism and the crisis of legitimacy in Eastern Europe are harbingers of major changes ahead which could lead the superpowers to adopt a more concerted approach. The key question for the superpower relationship, in fact, is whether the two great powers see advantage in continued and extended cooperation, or whether it will be more advantageous for them to maintain the existing patterns of East-West rivalry. And the answer to that question will shape the evolution of US-Soviet relations into the next century.