The Folly of Our ‘Wait and See’ on Soviets

The extraordinary public disagreement between Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and President Bush on the future of perestroika in the Soviet Union merely signals a deeper problem confounding the Administration. The near-glacial pace of the Administration’s review of U.S.-Soviet policy stems from the same source.

Administration officials appear perplexed by the meaning and significance of the changes occurring in the Soviet Union, and by the foreign-policy consequences of those changes. They are particularly stumped by assessments of two sets of factors. The first is the sincerity of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s initiatives. The second concerns the longevity of Gorbachev’s rule.

Under these circumstances, a “wait and see” attitude appears inviting and pragmatic to the Bush team. In point of fact, it is dangerous and will produce a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we do nothing, the Soviets are unlikely to adopt sufficient unilateral moves and gestures to resolve our uncertainties about them; we in turn will take that as evidence that they were not serious to begin with, and as justification for having done nothing! And events will continue to catch us off guard, as illustrated by the surprise and dismay caused in Washington by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s new position on tactical nuclear weapons.

The only viable option, if we wish to achieve a new order of relations with the Soviet Union, is to engage them in the give-and-take of serious negotiations, issue by issue, trying jointly to create such an order. For great powers, foreign policy is no spectator sport.

A necessary first step in developing a viable negotiations option is to divert our attention away from the riveting personality of Gorbachev and focus on the material, institutional and human factors that would confront any Soviet leader at this time:

--A fundamental objective of postwar Soviet foreign policy has been to overcome its strategic inferiority vis-a-vis the United States. The fact that the Soviet Union has achieved strategic parity, while neither side is capable at this time of acquiring meaningful superiority, diminishes the justification of our simply projecting Soviet past behavior into the future. And it gives credence to the Soviet claim to be searching for a new strategic orientation.

--The costs to the Soviet Union of achieving its current military status have been enormous. Therefore even the Soviet military now accepts the need for economic restructuring, as well as a reduction in military spending and in some Third World military commitments.

--The current foreign-policy posture of the Soviet Union--in the areas of strategic arms control, conventional arms reduction in Europe and resolving regional disputes through multilateral means--has yielded substantial dividends, especially in Western Europe. It is doubtful, for example, that our European allies will agree to undertake tactical nuclear-weapons modernization so long as the Soviet thaw persists. The Soviets are not oblivious to this fact.

--Recent Soviet initiatives at the United Nations no doubt were designed in part to embarrass Washington when U.S.-U.N. relations were at an all-time low, and to dress up the fig leaf behind which the Soviets wanted to hide as they withdrew from Afghanistan. But beyond these immediate tactical concerns, more-effective U.N. peacekeeping makes it possible for the Soviet Union to avoid costly Third World adventures without fear of creating a power vacuum that the United States might exploit.

--We have assumed that Soviet involvement in international economic institutions, such as the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the International Monetary Fund, is merely a ruse for them to gain additional credits and have opposed this effort. And we have dismissed as hypocrisy Soviet proposals to enhance the role of international law and the functioning of the World Court. But in some measure Soviet behavior here also is consistent with the dictates of perestroika and glasnost . The international economic organizations can become allies in bureaucratic battles to institute domestic economic reforms. Should these reforms fail, the organizations can become convenient scapegoats. Similarly, the need to conform with international law can become a vehicle in instituting domestic administrative reforms.

--Lastly, by now the Soviet Union has a substantial investment in its reform efforts, both at home and in the West. Abroad, the Soviet Union enjoys unprecedented respect, prestige and even success. Inside the Soviet Union, the need for a more dynamic and technologically advanced economy is not questioned by any of the various factions among the elite. And the Soviet public is increasingly mobilized, with the recent election indicating what Gorbachev no doubt wanted it to indicate--that for many people, the pace of reform is not yet fast enough.

The central thrust of the Soviet drive for domestic and foreign-policy change seems reasonably robust. This fact strengthens the case for serious negotiations to see if the vicious cycles of the past 40 years can’t be turned into more virtuous ones. Waiting and seeing won’t do it. Nor will bickering in public.