On Soviets We Agree to Disagree : Experts in Opposing Camps, Policy Aims Remain Confused

Seldom has there been such uniformity of expert opinion as there currently is concerning the conditions and prospects of the Soviet Union. Yet, ironically, this consensus has not diminished, and perhaps has even intensified, prevailing disagreements about preferred U.S. and Western policies.

The present consensus covers the economy’s general performance and future prospects, the outlook for Soviet hardcurrency earnings, the constrained but continued high level of Soviet military spending, the seriousness of social and demographic conditions and the continued firm political control exercised by the Soviet ruling class--the nomenklatura --anchored in the Communist Party and its supporting pillars of power, the KGB and the military.

If there is general agreement about these prevailing conditions, what are the policy differences, and why do they persist?

At the risk of some oversimplification, the policy differences can be divided between two broad orientations--detente-minus and containment-plus.

The detente-minus position harkens back to the 1970s era of detente. It views this era with some nostalgia, occasionally mixed with an acknowledgement, as well as mild criticism, that the benefits of detente in the past were perhaps too one-sided. According to this position, a new and updated version of detente could realize a better balance through harder bargaining on the part of the Western world, and tighter “linkage” between the Western “quids” and the Soviet “quos.” The West would thus benefit more, and give up less, than in the detente of the past. Hence, detente-minus. Among those holding this position are West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, many of our European allies, former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and many members of Congress as well as some officials in the State Department.

Detente-minus acknowledges that the Soviet Union is a hostile adversary, with values that are inimical to those of the West. However, according to this policy stance, we can “do business” with the Soviet Union because it shares with us a mutual interest in avoiding war, is genuinely anxious to avoid confrontation and is less inclined than in the ‘70s to expand its empire in the Third World arena. The detente-minus position views the Soviet Union as more or less similar to other nations in seeking to advance its national interests, and therefore willing to make and to adhere to agreements that reflect these interests.

Based on these assumptions, the policies that are favored by adherents of detente-minus include arms-control agreements (with the Strategic Defense Initiative favored as a bargaining chip to be traded for lower offensive-force levels); increased economic relations with the Soviet Union, encouraged by subsidies where necessary; expanded “dialogue” on a wide range of economic, scientific and technological matters, and general acceptance of the Marxist-Leninist states that have arisen in the Third World as well as ones that may arise in the future.

The containment-plus stance harkens back to the 1950s and ‘60s theme of the younger George Kennan (his views have changed rather sharply since the 1947 Mr. X article in Foreign Affairs). Whereas the original formulation of containment envisaged military, political and economic resistance to an expansion of the Soviet Union’s empire, the newer version of it would add prudent efforts both to reverse the expansion in the overseas empire that occurred in the 1970s and to alter the most noxious and secretive aspects of the Soviet system itself. Hence, containment-plus. Among those holding this position are President Reagan, his key Cabinet and sub-Cabinet aides, some members of Congress and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national-security adviser to President Jimmy Carter.

Containment-plus views the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” (the adjective is currently not fashionable, although the concept remains influential) that may alter its tactics but not its basic and irreconcilable long-term aim--namely, to “bury” capitalist democracy. According to this policy stance, the Soviet Union, because of the priority that it accords to military power and to the empire as well as its obsession with secrecy, centralized political control and the coercive power of its secret police, cannot abide a non-conflictual, open, international environment. Containment-plus tends to view the avoidance of a major war and the control of nuclear proliferation as the only common interests between the Soviet Union and the West.

Thus the containment-plus view opposes the use of the Strategic Defense Initiative as a standard bargaining chip to further arms-control negotiations, and instead urges accelerated and sustained research and development of strategic defense capabilities. Other policies favored by the containment-plus view include the implementation of the Reagan doctrine through support for “freedom fighters” and cooperative forces to reverse the Soviet empire in the Third World, as well as expanded information programs to reach and influence the peoples of the Soviet Union and its extended empire. Adherents of the containment-plus view would limit economic relations with the Soviets, confining them to relations that are strictly unsubsidized.

Of course there are shadings within, and combinations between, detente-minus and containment-plus. There is even occasional movement between them: For example, Henry A. Kissinger, the original architect of detente in the 1970s, currently occupies containment-plus ground.

The authors, who are adherents of the containment-plus position, recognize that the fundamental disagreement between it and detente-minus rests principally on the respectively different assumptions concerning the proper objectives of American and Western policy and the actual objectives and character of the Soviet Union. That the deep policy disagreements associated with these two positions remain unaffected by agreement concerning Soviet economic, social, political and military conditions follows unsurprisingly from the depth of the disagreements and their underlying assumptions. That such sharp disagreements among putative foreign policy experts persist, despite the prevailing consensus about the facts, suggests what psychologists refer to as “cognitive dissonance”--that is, if convictions are held strongly enough, they can abide a very wide range of unexpected and seemingly contradictory events without undergoing change.

In foreign policy, expertise may thus contribute more to agreement on diagnosis than to agreement on prescription. The latter requires the exercise of judgment, and that of the public may be no worse than that of the experts.