In Soviet Strategy, Power Still Counts

Four years after Mikhail S. Gorbachev began transforming Soviet foreign policy, a clear picture of his grand strategy is finally emerging.

Much of it is comforting to the West and represents a victory for America’s postwar containment of Soviet power. Most important, Gorbachev has recognized that nuclear competition has yielded the Soviets more risks than results and he has joined U.S. efforts to eliminate the threat of nuclear war. But Moscow also is mounting challenges in areas of strategic importance to the West that the United States is ill-prepared to counter.

Judging by his actions, the Soviet president has divided the world into three broad spheres of policy. Beyond the periphery of the Soviet Union, he has been ending involvements that either proved unprofitable or that brought marginal gains--in strategic terms, he is shortening his lines of action. Two developments stand out. In Africa, Gorbachev has supported U.S. efforts to secure independence for Namibia, to remove Cuban troops from Angola and to move the Angolan civil war to the bargaining table. In Central America, he has announced a halt to military aid to Nicaragua.

In both cases, Gorbachev has gained something in return. In Africa, Moscow has an improved image. In Central America, the Soviets have increased confidence that the Sandinistas will remain in power now that President Bush’s agreement with Congress has acknowledged the failure of the Contras. In both places, Moscow is reducing the drain on its resources caused by unproductive Cuban adventures. Gorbachev also must have recognized that Soviet communism has lost its appeal virtually everywhere. Indeed, Moscow is more likely to increase its influence in Third World countries by embracing a Western liberal agenda than by continuing to play a visible role as spoiler--while it retains both considerable capacity to project naval power and key bases in countries like Cuba and Vietnam.

Obviously, the United States benefits from any Soviet retreat from distant regions. But the West’s gains must be kept in perspective. In many areas, the United States has exaggerated the significance of the Soviet challenge. Even without Moscow’s involvement in the Third World, Washington would still face staggering difficulties, especially in Latin America.

Far more important in judging the future of East-West relations will be what happens in regions close to Soviet borders. Here, Gorbachev has drawn up two spheres--the stable and the unstable. In Europe, Gorbachev has recognized that the Soviet Union has more to gain by formally recognizing that neither side can prevail in war than by trying, through massive military deployments, to intimidate the West and to separate the United States from the Continent. It is not for nothing that he is the most popular political figure in Western Europe.

Again, the West also profits from Gorbachev’s diplomacy. Only leaders who lack vision or self-confidence can mourn the reduction of military threat to Western Europe. If and when a more temperate Soviet Union becomes commonplace, it will be required to compete in terms of economic and political life, where it has little to offer. China offers a different example. Moscow has ratified several years of stable relations with Beijing by abandoning the albatross of direct military engagement in Afghanistan, thinning out forces in Mongolia and disciplining Vietnam in Cambodia. Thus Gorbachev has reduced, if not eliminated, the U.S. strategic advantage--the China card--that derived from the renewal of Sino-American relations. This act of competing with the United States is less serious than it might have been a decade ago. For some time, U.S. ties to China have been important more because of developments within the region--and thus worthy of preserving, even after recent events--than because of a three-cornered great-power game.

This comparison of relative benefits does not apply to basically unstable areas close to the Soviet Union that are more in contention between the superpowers than China. The Soviet Union has been vigorously seeking primacy in southwest Asia. In Afghanistan, it is bent on winning through knowledge, craft, diplomacy and patience what military involvement did not avail. And in the past few weeks, the Soviets have come closer to realizing their ambitions in Iran--critical to Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Western oil supplies and the Indian subcontinent--than at any other time since the Great Game in the region between Russia and the West began two centuries ago.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has reacted with more bewilderment than insight. The Administration clucked that arms sales to Iran would not be consistent with joining what the President has called the global “neighborhood,” and it seemed surprised that Gorbachev sent condolences when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died.

It may be understandable that a young Administration has not yet marshaled the resources to match the Soviets in Afghanistan or surmounted domestic political inhibitions against competing in Iran. But it must realize the consequences of failure to master all parts of Gorbachev’s grand strategy--the negative as well as the positive. The President and his team must learn to compete and cooperate with the Soviet Union at different places at the same time, and they must explain this dichotomy to the American people. At best, the alternative will be dashed expectations--which a decade ago killed detente--when it becomes clear that the Soviets have not abandoned the pursuit of power.