Gorbachev’s ‘Retreat’ Is a Step Westward

Sometimes the unnoticed details of arms-control negotiations are the most important in illuminating motivation.

For example, one of the last disputes in the recent U.S.-Soviet negotiations was the timetable for removal of intermediate-range missiles, with Washington preferring a three-year period and Moscow five years. It seemed trivial, and in the end the Soviet Union apparently accepted the American position. Behind the triviality, however, is an extremely important question.

In the early 1980s the Soviets gave the Pershing 2 missile the same kind of attention that they have recently devoted to space weapons. The Pershing 2, they said, was extraordinarily dangerous because it could reach Moscow in nine minutes and destroy the Soviet decision-makers before they could retaliate. It was, they said, a first-strike weapon.

But in concrete terms the disagreement on the timetable meant that the Soviet Union was insisting that some of these terrible first-strike weapons be allowed to stay for five years while Washington was willing to take them out in three. What in heaven’s name was going on?

No doubt the Soviet Union’s timetable was a tacit acknowledgment that it had exaggerated the danger of the Pershing 2, but it actually is the only weapon in the negotiations that is militarily significant and cannot have its functions easily replaced by another missile. Surely the Soviet military would like it out quickly.

The Soviets’ lack of concern about the Pershing 2 demonstrates clearly that military considerations have not been paramount in their thinking about European negotiations. Many Western analysts acknowledge this, and they say that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s motivation is a domestic one--he is politically weak at home, and needs an agreement to strengthen his position.

This argument is seriously flawed. Gorbachev has strengthened his political position enormously during 1987, most recently by adding three close allies to the Politburo. A an agreement to exchange 1,600 Soviet warheads for 436 Western ones could do political damage to Gorbachev at home, rather than strengthening him.

Gorbachev’s problem is illustrated by a recent Pravda article on Jan Rudzutak, an opponent of an opening to the West who was supporting Lenin in the latter’s battle against Soviet moderates in 1922 negotiations. The article made Lenin’s position clear and said that for him “compromise” was one thing but “serious concession” and “retreat” were another. It was no accident that the relatively conservative editor of Pravda chose to emphasize this event in Rudzutak’s life.

We should reverse our usual domestic political analysis of Gorbachev’s decision. Gorbachev did not make an agreement because he was politically weak, but because he is now politically strong enough to get away with the retreats that he has made. The likely removal of the Pravda editor in the near future will be another sign of his strength.

Gorbachev has been motivated by far broader and different considerations than we usually assume. He wants the opening to the West that Rudzutak and Lenin opposed. If the Soviet Union is to remain a great power, he must integrate it into the world economy.

He is determined to do so. He wants large-scale foreign investment in the Soviet Union, access of Soviet-manufactured goods to foreign markets and intimate technology transfer in joint production operations. His main problem is not domestic opposition, it is American opposition. He must break the American technological blockade.

What Gorbachev gets from an intermediate-range nuclear-force agreement is American legitimization of Soviet dealings with American allies. Because of this pending agreement, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl felt that he could invite East German leader Erich Honecker to Bonn in early September. Because of it, Latin American countries felt free to invite Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze to visit in late September. Economic relations will also be easier.

Even though it would have meant the retention of the Pershing 2, Gorbachev wanted to stretch the timetable to five years because it would extend the legitimization process through the entire next U.S. Administration. Moreover, Gorbachev has no interest in weakening the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a military alliance (he fears an independent Germany), only in breaking the technological blockade. He fears an American military decoupling from Europe as much as we do--a five-year timetable would have been useful from that point of view.

The Soviet reintegration into the West is a good thing, and I am not disturbed by the consequences of the negotiations. But if we do not understand our adversary, we will blunder into mistakes as well as good decisions.