Chernenko's Inheritance: The Parameters of Soviet Foreign Policy

Daniel Yergin. Shattered Peace (Harmondsworth: Pelican. 1980), Chapters 1 and 2.

On the variation in recent Western discussion of the USSR, see George Kennan , The Nuclear Delusion (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984), and Jonathan Haslam , 'Ideology and Soviet Foreign Policy', Millennium Journal of International Studies (Vol. 5, No. 3, 1976).

The thesis of Soviet 'expansionism' rests upon dubious conceptional bases. If this is meant to imply something precise, namely an inherent, systemic imperative to expand, then it has no foundation: the USSR clearly has no need to expand its already deficitary foreign economic relations with Eastern Europe and the Third World; while it seeks allies and maintains communist parties in power- it has shown itself willing to evacuate or permit the defiance of a wide range of allies (see note 21). Historical expansionism is sometimes intended. But, for example, Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe can hardly be seen as 'expansionist', as it is inseparable from the Nazi attack of 1941 and its consequences. If the term is used in a looser sense to cover a country that has altered its borders or sought to do so, stationed troops abroad. or sought to influence the policies of other states, then it becomes banal, in that probably the majority of the world's states could be included: Ireland, Guatemala, Morocco. Israel, and Indonesia, to name but a few, would be equal candidates for this category.

Much of what is published, and of what is leaked by the Russians, is at best tendentious. For an example of a convincing analysis of foreign policy divisions within the Soviet leadership on Middle East policy see llana Kass , Soviet Involvement in the Middle East: Policy Formulation 1966-1973 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978). On the purge of Soviet military commanders during the Polish crisis of 1980. see Andrew Cockburn. The Threat (London : Hutchinson. 1983), pp. 71-72.

I have discussed these issues further in my Threat from the East? (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1992) and The Making of the Second Cold War ( London: Verso. 1983).

Among recently published works that approach the topic in a measured tone I would mention in particular Jonathan Steele , World Power: Soviet Foreign Policy under Brezhnev and Andropov (London: Michael Joseph, 1983), and Robin Edmonds , Soviet Foreign Policy in the Brezhnev Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). I would also acknowledge a long-term debt to the work of Isaac Deutscher: see in particular his The Great Contest (Oxford: Oxford University Press , 1960), and Russia. China and the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).

Daniel Ellsberg , 'Call to Mutiny', in Dan Smith. et. al. (eds.). Protest and Survive (New York: Monthly Review Press. 1981).

SIPRI Yearbook 1983 (London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 1983 ). p. 48.

The Soviet superiority in land-based TNFs, one happily conceded by the West in the 1960s when it voluntarily withdrew its Thor and Jupiter missiles, is offset by the Poseidon SLBMs assigned to NATO and the qualitative superiority of NATO bombers carrying nuclear warheads.

Desmond Hall ,'The MX Basing Decision', Survival (Vol. 22, March-April 1980), p. 58; Aviation Week and Space Technology, 16 June 1980.

The Military Balance 1983-1484[London: IISS, 1983), pp. 118-19.

Strategic Survey 1980-1981 (London: IISS, 1981), p. 14. The other great US lead is in submarine detection: US submarines are completely invulnerable to Soviet detection and thus attack, whereas US forces can track Soviet submarines in most of the world's oceans. See Richard Garwin , 'Will Strategic Submarines be Vulnerable?', International Security (Vol. 8, No. 2, Fall 1983), and SIPRI Yearbook 1983 (Stockholm : SIPRI, 1983).

Thus General Christian Krause: 'Nato's deterrence against a Warsaw Pact major attack with conventional forces in Central Europe can be considered ensured'. END Papers (No. 6). p. 54.

For instance, NATO has 19 aircraft carriers, two of which carry helicopters only: the USSR has 5 aircraft carriers, 2 of which carry helicopters only. The other 3 Soviet carriers (Kiev class, 37,000 tons) are smaller than the two smallest US carriers in active service (Midway class, 51/62,000 tons) and are dwarfed by the 3 largest (Nimitz class, 91,400 tons). None of the Soviet carriers can launch fighters with deep-penetration capability. Sec The Military Balance 1983-1984, op. cit., pp. 7, 16, 142. For a good general discussion of comparative conventional naval and air capabilities with relevance to the Third World, see Michel Klare , 'The Power Projection Gap: A Comparison of US and Soviet Long-Range Intervention Capabilities', in Beyond the 'Vietnam Syndrome' (Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, 1981).

Another example: 1983 figures show NATO and China with roughly 9.4 million men under arms. 5.3 millions and 4,1 millions respectively, compared to 6.2 millions for the Warsaw Pact. Japan's 241,000 can also be counted amongst the USSR's potential foes. The Military Balance 1983-1984, op. cit., pp. 125-7.

1982 figures, in 1980 prices, show total NATO expenditure as $285.7 billions, as against total Warsaw Pact expenditure of $148.3 billions, Japan spends another $10.4 billions, and China $39.4 billions. US expenditure alone at $169.7 billions outstrips Soviet outlays of $135.5 billions. See SIPRI Yearbook 1983. op. cit,, pp. 161, 163.

For the Soviet view of 'parity' see Georgi Arbatov , Cold War or Detente? (London: Zed Press, 1983).

B. Blechman and S. Kaplan , Force Without War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1978), p. 48. Seymour Hersh , in his Kissinger: The Price of Power (London: Faber and Faber, 1983), p. 124, gives a further case, the Strategic Air Command alert ordered by Nixon for 17 days in 1969. The only comparable case of a Soviet usage of nuclear weapons in a crisis was during the 1956 Suez crisis when Khrushchev threatened to drop rockets on London and Paris.

This point is well made in Jonathan Steele , op. cit, pp. 91-92. See also Philip Hanson , 'Soviet Trade with Eastern Europe', in P. Hanson and K. Dawisha (eds.), Soviet-East European Dilemmas (London: Heinemann/ RIIA, 1981). World Bank figures for 1979 give a Soviet GNP per capita of $4,110. compared to S6.430 in the GDR and $5,290 in Czechoslovakia. See World Development Report 1981 (Washington, DC : World Bank. 1981), p. 135.

The underlying cause of the Sino-Soviet split was Khrushchev's attempt to find common ground with the US from 1956 onwards. The greatest single issue in dispute between the two states, as opposed to parties, was the Soviet decision to cancel a 1957 agreement to share nuclear technology with China. And the final straw in the eyes of Peking was the July 1963 signing of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Selig Harrison , 'The Shah, not Kremlin, Touched Off Afghan Coup '. Washington Post. 13 May 1979. 1 have gone into this in greater detail in Threat from the East?, op. cit.. and in 'Revolution in Afghanistan', New Left Review 112 (November-December 1978). The contrary view is given by Henry Bradsher in his Afghanistan and the Soviet Union (Durham, NC: Duke Press Policy Studies, 1983), pp. 82-4. Bradsher criticises Harrison and myself for highlighting the Iranian role, and he is right to say that Soviet advisers must have known just before the coup that it was going to happen. But this is quite different from saying that the USSR actually instigated it - the same could be said for US advisors in countries where the local military have staged coups. Perhaps the best contrast is with Czechoslovakia in 1948: here it seems clear that the USSR did organise a communist party coup. The Afghan case is, on present evidence, distinct.

As is shown by the number of cases where the USSR has been ordered to leave by countries in which it had a military or political presence: China, Rumania and Yugoslavia within the communist camp, Egypt and Somalia in the groupof Third World nationalists.

This I discuss in Chapter 4 of The Making of the Second Cold War, op. cit.

For the theory of'states of socialist orientation' see Sylvia Edgington , 'The "State of Socialist Orientation" as Soviet Development Politics', Soviet Union, Union Sovietique (Autumn 1981), and V. Chirkin and Y. Yudin , A Socialist Orientated State (Moscow : Progress Publishers, 1978).

On Ethiopia see Fred Halliday and Marine Molyneux. The Ethiopian Revolution (London: Verso Books, 1982).

On the transformation of post-revolutionary states see G. White , R. Murray and C. White (eds.), Revolutionary Socialist Development in the Third World (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1983), and Peter Wiles (ed.). The New Communist Third World (London: Croom Helm, 1982).

According to British Foreign Office figures. 76 per cent of Soviet development aid in 1982 went to six countries ruled by communist parties—Cuba. Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos. Afghanistan and Cambodia. 'Soviet, East European and Western Development Aid 1976-82', Foreign Policy Document No. 85, 1983.

The practice of the NKVD in the Spanish civil war, of liquidating political opponents within a country outside the hloc, has not been repeated in the post-Stalin period.

International Herald Tribune, 8 November 1982.

See Jonathan Steele , op. cit., Hedrick Smith, The Russians (London: Sphere Books, 1976). and Roy and Zhores Medvedev, 'The USSR and the Arms Race ', in Edward Thompson , et. al., Exterminism and Cold War (London: Verso Books, 1982).

On Soviet decision-making procedures sec Jonathan Steele and Eric Abraham , Andropov in Power (Oxford: Martin Robertson . 1983), pp. 64 ff., and Mary McAuley , Politics and the Soviet Union ( Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1977), Chapter 8.

Oded Eran. The Mezhdunarodniki (Tel Aviv, 1979). and Jerry Hough , Soviet Leadership in Transition (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1980). I have described a visit to the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow in 'Moscow Looks South', New Society, 23 December 1982.

By far the most cogent explanation of this question isgiven in David Holloway , The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); see also Jerry Hough, op. cit.

The countries were: Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos. Cuba, Afghanistan, South Yemen, Ethiopia, Libya, Syria, Madagascar, and Angola.