Soviet Union Rediscovers the Charms of Diplomacy

With the end of the 27th Communist Party Congress in Moscow, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s combination of dynamism and orthodoxy emerges with greater clarity. The combination particularly applies to an area that the congress barely touched on--foreign policy.

So much had taken place before the congress convened. There was the arms-control initiative in January, the trip to Tokyo by Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the exchange of prisoners in which Soviet Jewish dissident Anatoly Shcharansky was released, the rumors of negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan and, finally, the advances made to Israel. Clearly the Soviet Union has rediscovered the charms and merits of diplomacy.

In so doing the Soviet Union has a dual objective: to consolidate its gains realized in the 1970s while reaffirming its status as a world power, and to regain the diplomatic and strategic initiative lost to the United States since Ronald Reagan took office.

For the Soviets the 1970s were a propitious decade in terms of external power. But expectations were not completely fulfilled. In pushing its advantages too far, in trying too hard, the Soviets provoked the United States, which, humiliated in Iran, would no longer stand silent. Soviet intervention in Afghanistan proved costlier than expected. In Poland, Soviet control showed signs of cracking. In a battle with the Western alliance over Euromissiles, an elderly Soviet leadership stumbled. The Soviet Union misjudged the correlation of forces and overestimated its capacity to influence public opinion at a time when its international image was in decline.

The Soviet Union learned from failure. For this end, it shows a new leader with refreshing dynamism and imagination. Yet the Soviet Union’s fundamental objectives remain unchanged. Gorbachev’s arms-control proposal is a clear example.

The Soviets want to block Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative while using it as a tool to divide the Western allies. For West Europeans the real objective of Gorbachev’s proposal to eliminate nuclear weapons everywhere in the world by 1999 is to de-nuclearize Western Europe now. By reopening the Euromissile quarrel, with Gorbachev calling for both superpowers to eliminate their missiles in Europe, and by putting even more pressure on France and Great Britain by forbidding them to upgrade their missiles as now planned, the Soviet Union applies the same tactic: divide and conquer . The aim is to create friction between the United States and Europe and among European nations themselves over nuclear and non-nuclear power.

To give an impression of movement, openness and moderation without yielding in content is the fundamental Soviet strategy. This also applies to its regional diplomacy. The Soviet Union, for example, now gives a high priority to Asia, where it wants to reaffirm its world-power status and be better able to control worrisome geopolitical changes by continuing to normalize relations--especially with China.

Yet it is doubtful that the Soviet Union is any more ready today than in the past to strike a territorial compromise with Japan. It probably has no intention of exchanging islands whose significance may be more symbolic than real for a more complete normalization. But in showing openness toward Japan, whose current economic clout and potential political importance is fully recognized, the Soviets are pursuing the same strategy: to heighten friction. They capitalized on Japan’s concern over U.S. protectionism by moving skillfully, and discreetly, through diplomatic means. Japan received Shevardnadze to signal the United States that it should not go too far with economic sanctions, but also that there is nothing to fear, given Japan’s old quarrel with the Soviet Union.

In Afghanistan, by hinting--with the help of Pakistan--at opening peace negotiations, the Soviet Union seeks to prolong the political and military status quo while alleviating some of the external pressures.

In the Middle East, by its advances to Israel, the Soviet Union seeks to reassert itself in future global negotiations. But the release of Shcharansky, which may be more a product of Soviet East-West diplomacy than Middle East diplomacy, does not represent the first step toward a new and important wave of Soviet Jewish emigration or a prelude to the resumption of formal diplomatic relations with Israel. The immediate diplomatic cost would be too high for the Soviet Union.

In Zimbabwe the Soviet Union continues a policy of rapprochement with Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, which puts it in a more favorable position to exploit the unrest in South Africa. This advantage tends to compensate for Soviet failure in Angola, where the Marxist regime has failed to limit the growing influence of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.

Always ambitious in the long run, always opportunistic in the short, ever ready to exploit weaknesses of the adversary, always keen on not taking unnecessary risks, the Soviet Union is trying to formulate a diplomacy that corresponds to its means and ambitions. The West can no longer count on Soviet diplomatic blunders to compensate for its own internal divisions.