Superpower Conflict Resolution: Lessons for the Future

Abstract

Despite the significant progress that the United States and the USSR have made in cooperating to resolve regional conflicts, many of these conflicts continue. One reason for this is that the Soviet and American governments have had differing expectations regarding what the outcome of superpower conflict resolution efforts should be. Yet even when Soviet and American aims are similar, there are other obstacles to conflict resolution. Among these are the lack of commitment to democracy on the part of one or more of the local antagonists in regional conflicts, and involvement by other external parties in the conflicts. There is no guarantee that the superpowers can successfully resolve regional conflicts even if they adopt a common approach to conflict resolution, but adopting a common approach may at least allow Washington and Moscow to unlink their overall relations from those conflicts that cannot be resolved.

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References

See also U.S., Department of Defense , Soviet Military Power, 1990 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1990), pp. 17-19, 101.

2. Despite Chinese government assurances that it had halted military aid to the Khmer Rouge in September 1990, the Khmer Rouge continue to receive Chinese arms. Steven Erlanger , “Khmer Rouge Get More China Arms,” New York Times, 1 Jan. 1991.

3. Mark N. Katz , Gorbachev's Military Policy in the Third World (New York: Praeger, 1989), chap. 4.

4. Mark N. Katz , Russia and Arabia: Soviet Foreign Policy toward the Arabian Peninsula (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 24-32.

5. For example, Joe Slovo, head of the South African Communist Party, recently denounced the concept of a one-party state. Christopher S. Wren , “In Pretoria, Last Throes of Marxism?” New York Times, 19 Feb. 1990.