World Power: Soviet Foreign Policy Under Brezhnev and Andropov PDF
Preview World Power: Soviet Foreign Policy Under Brezhnev and Andropov
WORLD POWER Books by the same author The South African Connection Eastern Europe since Stalin Socialism with a German Face Superpowers in Collision Comrade Andropov WORLD POWER SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY UNDER BREZHNEV AND ANDROPOV Jonathan Steele Michael Joseph London First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd 44 Bedford Square, London WC1 1983 ©Jonathan Steele 1983 All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Copyright owner. ISBN 07181 2297 6 Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by Hollen Street Press, Slough, and bound by The Dorstel Press, Harlow ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Many people, directly and indirectly, have contributed to this book. I would particularly like to thank the Guardian, which dispatched me so often to the Soviet Union and let me report its activities in such critical areas as Afghanistan, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. My special gratitude goes to its present editor, Peter Preston, for giving me most of these assignments, as well as leave of absence to write the major part of this book. Among those who read and commented on draft chapters, I want to thank Ian Black, Victoria Brittain, John Gittings, Jonathan Mirsky, Peter Osnos, and John Rettie. Geraldine Petley typed the final version at amazing speed. Geoffrey Stern was an eagle-eyed critic of the entire draft. Ruth Steele gave constant encouragement and unflagging support. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/worldpowersovietOOOOstee CONTENTS Introduction ix part one—THE CENTER 1. The Andropov Inheritance 3 2. The Soviet View of National Security ' 15 3. The Growth of Soviet Power 26 4. The United States: The Rise and Fall of Detente 47 5. Western Europe: Is There a Soviet Threat? 70 6. Eastern Europe: Unusual Empire 87 7. Afghanistan 116 8. Asian Anxieties 131 part two—THE PERIPHERY 9. Approaches to the Third World 163 10. The Middle East 179 11. Latin America 207 12. Africa 226 PART THREE—CONCLUSION 13. Prospects for the 1980s 247 Notes 261 Index 273 INTRODUCTION At a recent exhibition in Paris of early Soviet art I came across a poster of a Russian factory worker astride a horse. The folds of the giant red banner he was carrying rippled majestically in line with the flow of the horse’s mane. Dated 1918 and signed by Leon Trotsky, the motto of this dashing picture was stark: “To horse, proletariat! The workers’ revolution needs a powerful Red cavalry.” Bizarre requirement, one might think. But it was rationalized at the time by the necessity of self-defense and the desire to spread the message of Soviet power. Sixty-five years later the same twin motives have given the workers’ revolution the equally strange “requirement” of hundreds of independently targetable nuclear warheads and Soviet military command posts in places as distant as Addis Ababa, Budapest, and Kabul. The paradoxes of Soviet security policy are almost as old as the revolution itself. Yet in no period of Soviet history have they been as acute as in the Brezhnev era, a time of “detente” that was matched by an unparalleled growth in Soviet military might. Under Leonid Brezhnev the Soviet Union became a world power. It acquired an arsenal of long-range missiles that can reach any part of the globe within minutes. Its navy patrols the world’s oceans. Its political interests rival those of its only serious competitor, the United States. All this is a vast change from 1964 when Nikita Khrushchev was removed from power in the Kremlin. At that time, though embracing more than half the landmass of Europe and Asia combined, the Soviet Union was still a continental rather than a global power, in no way comparable with the United States in military might. But what is its power for, and why has it grown? Some claim that the Soviet Union is aiming to dominate the entire globe. At his first press conference as president, Ronald Reagan confidently declared, “I know of no leader of the Soviet Union, since the revolution and including the present leadership, that has not more than once repeated . . . their determination that their goal must be the promotion of world revolution and a one-world socialist or communist state.”1 Reagan was perhaps referring to the final words of the now superseded Soviet constitution of 1924, which indeed say that “the USSR . . . will mark a decisive new step toward the union of the workers of all countries in one World Socialist Soviet Republic.”2 On the other side are fellow-travelers and apologists for the Soviet Union who argue that its every action is guided by an unswerving desire for peace. They, too, have numerous Soviet texts on which to base their case. In spite of the increasing alarmism in most Western governments about Soviet ix X INTRODUCTION intentions, there has been an astonishing decline in Russian studies and in the availability of professional expertise from Russian-speaking observers of the Soviet scene, whether they be diplomats, journalists, or academics. In the United States the number of graduate students in Russian studies has dropped to its lowest point since the Second World War, leading to an estimate that in 1982 the Soviet Union had three times as many specialists on American foreign policy as the United States had on Soviet foreign policy.3 The situation in Britain was little better. The most recent official report found a picture of stagnation in the number of undergraduates and graduates studying Russian throughout the 1970s.4 Partly because they feel unsure of Soviet intentions, and sometimes because of a deliberate desire to misrepresent the facts, many Western decisionmakers insist that the only basis for Western policy toward the Soviet Union should be the nature of Soviet capabilities. What matters is not what Moscow is likely to do, but what it can do. This inevitably leads to a “worst case” analysis of Kremlin options in any crisis—an approach that encourages pessimism, if not paranoia. It tends to weight the discussion in favor of military quantification rather than political judgment. Emphasis on Soviet military capabilities is a reasonable starting point for those who design weapons, but it should not be the primary or sole guide for those who design Western policies. The central argument of this book is that there is a sufficient body of evidence, based on Soviet practice, to throw light on the Kremlin’s thinking and inten tions. Careful analysis of the Kremlin’s record—where the Soviet Union has intervened and where it has not, what its leaders have said and what they have done, when they have moved quickly and when they have been slow to react—can offer a guide to their motives and the likely patterns of future action. Public statements that pour out of the Kremlin and its agencies in tidal quantities also have their value. While they, like those of other countries’ spokesmen, are often designed to conceal more than they reveal, they cannot be totally ignored. Nor can discussions with Soviet Union officials, academics, and journalists be ruled out as clues to Soviet thinking. Soviet leaders’ private and sometimes unguarded conversational comments to Western visitors during the period of detente also provide a useful source of information. The combined weight of this evidence, as well as the recent historical record, suggest that Soviet policy is less adventurous, energetic, and threatening than conventional Western wisdom proclaims. Phrases like “expansionism,” “the Soviet threat,” “nuclear blackmail,” and “appeasement” are bandied about in the West with little effort to examine what they mean or whether they apply to reality. Of course one should not forget the lasting features of the Soviet system—the centralized bureaucracy, Russian domination of the numerous national minor ities, the Communist party’s monopoly of power, the controlled press, intoler ance of dissent—but within these confines there have been significant changes in INTRODUCTION xi Soviet society since the war. The same is true of Soviet foreign policy. The image of a remorselessly expanding Soviet Union, which was formed in the 1940s when Stalin imposed Soviet control over the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, is no longer valid in the 1980s. Within the continuing context of a missionary ideology and a publicly pro claimed faith in the eventual triumph of socialism over capitalism, the Kremlin’s perceptions of the world have undergone important changes. Soviet foreign policy, far more than Soviet domestic policy, is circumscribed by an external environment that no planner can control. Soviet policymakers have to operate in an international context which is overwhelmingly hostile to, and suspicious of, their intentions. The constraints this imposes on the Kremlin have gradually created a pattern of Soviet activity that differs from what policymakers in an ideal world would pursue, but is the reality to which they and their successors have become accustomed. Hopes are frustrated. Plans are abandoned. Eager ness becomes caution. The second main argument of this book is that the Soviet Union is a society with a tired regime and a host of foreign and domestic problems. • The growth of its strategic nuclear power has been a response and reaction to initiatives of the United States. • In Europe, it is a conservative, status quo power, more concerned to hold on to its postwar conquests in Eastern Europe than to advance further westward. • It gains more from trading with the capitalist West than from subsidizing the economically inefficient East. • In Asia its primary objective is not external but internal: how to develop the vast resources of Siberia. • In the Third World it seeks, like other industrial nations, to enlarge its power and influence by diplomatic, economic, and political means. • It sees the strengthening of the Soviet Union at home as the main guarantee of an eventual spread of socialism abroad, and not vice versa. • Only in the most exceptional cases, such as Afghanistan, has it been prepared to defend a revolution abroad, and even then it has acted primarily out of fear for Soviet security. • In general, its aid for what it calls the anti-imperialist cause has been cautious, grudging, and calculated to avoid risk. This leads to the book’s third argument. Yuri Andropov is having to adjust to the fundamental paradox of the Brezhnev era. While Soviet military power increased in the 1960s and 1970s, its political influence declined. In almost every
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