On September 3, 1984, the official opening day of the U.S. presidential election campaign, three distinguished and experienced Democrats — W. Averell Harriman, Clark M. Clifford, and Marshall D. Schulman — called for a restoration of a serious, bipartisan U.S. approach to Soviet-American relations and the issue of nuclear weapons. (See their article, “U.S. Needs a Serious Bipartisan Approach to the Soviet,” New York Times/International Herald Tribune, Sept. 3, 1984) The three authors identified a major problem existing not merely in the U.S. but throughout the Atlantic Alliance: the breakdown of the basic consensus on foreign and security policies among principal and democratic political parties in the West. In their contribution, however, they also showed themselves to be part of the problem they identified. Instead of critically analyzing Reagan Administration policies and offering some realistic alternative approaches to the Soviet Union, they painted a caricature of present American foreign policy, and came to the conclusion that the Reagan Administration primarily is to blame for the deterioration in Soviet-American relations. They even went a step further. “U.S. policies,” they wrote, “have made Moscow more truculent, more persuaded of a malign American intent — therefore more dangerous. This embattled state of mind has also tightened the grip of repressive practices in Soviet society.” Earlier in that same article, they described these “U.S. policies” as “the vagaries of circus politics” and the product of “media consultants and image manipulators.”
Such an evaluation of present American foreign policy does not appear to me to be helpful for the required restoration of a more bipartisan approach. Even more serious, however, is the fact that the authors, in their vicious attack on the Administration, no longer understand the more important causes for the present state of East-West relations.
It is a massive error of judgment, for instance, to explain the tightened grip of repressive practices in Soviet society by the embattled state of mind in the Kremlin, presumably caused by policies. Repression of human rights has been an e4kntial characteristic of Soviet totalitarian rule ever since 1917. In recent years repression was stepped up the moment the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was solemnly concluded on August 1, 1975, that is, when East and West began to pursue detente. Neither the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan nor the brutal suppression of Solidarity in Poland had anything to do with present American foreign policy.
It is equally erroneous to assume that the U.S. administration’s military programs “have stiffened the Kremlin’s determination to match U.S. military efforts,” as the authors do. Military superiority over the West has been a constant Soviet aim since 1928 and its achievement — as far as the European theater is concerned — is the fruit of the Soviet military doctrine elaborated in 1960.
Moscow’s current “truculence” is only secondarily related to current American foreign policies. In actual fact, it has two principal causes, one internal to the Soviet Union, the other related to the political failure of the Soviet military build-up, in particular the SS-20 program.
Regarding the cause, Vladimir Bukovsky wrote in Commentary (May 1982):
The two sides of the Soviet regime — internal oppression and external aggression — are inseparably interlocked, creating a sort of vicious circle. The more the regime becomes rotten inside, the more pains are taken by its leaders to present a formidable facade to the outside world. They need international tension as a thief needs the darkness of the night…. Nor is it enough to create a devil in order to maintain one’s religious zeal. This imaginary enemy must be defeated over and over again or there will be the risk that he will seduce you.
The political failure of the Soviet military build-up, in particular its SS-20 deployments, is the second cause of Moscow’s truculence. The principal aim of the SS-20s was to dissociate the United States from the defense of Western Europe. From 1979 — when the Carter administration agreed with its allies to deploy Pershing Its and cruise missiles — until November 1983 — when the first American missiles were deployed in Britain and Germany — Moscow mobilized all its “peace forces” to prevent the NATO deployment. Moscow’s “peace campaign” failed and it became very belligerent indeed. The Soviet Union walked out of the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Force) negotiations and suspended Soviet-American START talks. Even in the event President Reagan had treated arms control as truly important — quod non, according to his critics — there was no longer anybody with whom to talk.
The serious error of judgment by three distinguished American Democrats in an election campaign would hardly merit such extensive treatment if it did not reflect a major NATO-wide problem, which is more serious in Western’ Europe than it is in the United States.
Briefly, the problem can be stated as follows. For a considerable period of time, democratic political parties in the member states of the Alliance agreed on the nature of the Soviet threat, as did the majority of their intellectuals. Bipartisan or multipartisan support for maintaining adequate military strength and political solidarity assured popular legitimacy of joint security policies.
In the late sixties democratic political consensus began to erode, and security policies were turned into major issues of domestic politics. The assessment of the threat to Western security and the policies proposed to cope with it became entangled in the domestic political divisions between left- wing “progressive” and right-wing “conservative parties.”
Priority for detente in East-West relations became associated with the progressives’ views on the future of democratic societies. Priority for the maintenance of a strong European-American partnership became associated with the conservatives’ views on the organization of the economy. Progressive parties, advocating change towards a more socialist society, began to see detente as an opportunity to underline the differences in domestic organization and foreign policies between Western Europe and “capitalist” America. Their priority for detente was based on a rediscovery of the ideological affinity between social democrats, socialists and communists across the East-West divide. This led to a renewed emphasis on presumed fundamental differences between “Left” and “Right” in democratic societies, and between Western Europe and North America in foreign policies. It tended to obfuscate the far more fundamental differences between pluralist democracies and left-wing repressive regimes, while undermining democratic consensus by internal political polarization in West European countries. The conservative-Republican victory in the 1980 U.S. presidential elections contributed to political polarization between the United States and Western Europe.
In the minds of the European Left, America ceased to be the reliable democratically and became one of two “superpowers”, to be criticized for its “capitalism” and its “imperialist” foreign policies. The Soviet Union ceased to be the principal threat to Western security and became the “other superpower” (which felt itself threatened), merely seeking a status equal to the United States.
The utopian character of socialist ideology strengthened the European left in its view that the Soviet Union could be made a partner for peace and disarmament, if only the West would alter its perceptions of Soviet policy. The blame for East-West tension passed from Moscow to the “right” in Western Europe and to Washington in the Atlantic Alliance. Fruitful arms-control negotiations, on this view, would be around the corner if the West would follow the progressives’ approach to detente and if Americans would elect a Democrat as president. The three distinguished American Democrats referred to earlier seem to hold the same view.
The internal political polarization of views on security and defense has a number of serious consequences. It induces the more conservative political parties to stress unduly the need for rebuilding military strength and to blame the Left for weakening the democracies by attitudes of appeasement and accommodation towards the Kremlin. In so doing conservatives further undermine popular and political sup-port for maintaining adequate military strength and NATO political solidarity. Internal political polarization also reduces the chances for serious East-West arms-control negotiations. Western arms-control efforts, both by government and by opposition, are too much focused on winning votes at home. At the same time, the Soviet Union remains free to refuse serious talks and to continue to intensify its political warfare campaign aimed at deepening the divisions between Western Europe and the United States and between political parties inside NATO countries.
The principal victim, finally, of internal political polarization, is clarity of judgment about the nature of the threat facing the Alliance and about the sources of Soviet behavior. The absence of sufficient clarity of judgment has been all too apparent recently, on both sides of the political spectrum. On the basis of the speculations of their “Kremlinologists”, politicians of very different persuasions compete in offering explanations of Soviet behavior, as if the Kremlin were a legitimate center of government. The power struggle for Soviet succession is treated as a kind of election campaign between “hawks” and “doves.” Gromyko’s willingness (!) to talk with President Reagan and other Western leaders is treated as a genuine declaration of political intent. Have our politicians all forgotten that whoever is high enough in the Kremlin to participate in the power struggle must by definition be a hawk, committed to internal repression, hegemony over Eastern Europe and aggressive behavior against the West?
The restoration of a bipartisan American, a multipartisan European, and a European-American allied approach to the Soviet Union and nuclear arms-control is an urgent necessity indeed. This will require intellectuals and politicians to restore rational argument and clear analysis of the Soviet threat and of the nature of the political warfare pursued by the Kremlin against the Western democracies. Political parties must avoid excessive political polarization, de-emphasize their ideological differences, and return to a more realistic understanding of the far more important distinctions between pluralist democracies and repressive regimes.