Brezhnev's Peace Program

A Study Of Soviet Domestic Political Process And Power

Peter M. E. Volten

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429716812
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Dr Volten analyses the foreign policy-making process in the Soviet Union, particularly in connection with the Brezhnev's Peace programme in the 1970s, which was supposed to normalise political-economic relations with the West and curb military rivalry.

Part One
Process, Power and Foreign Policy

1
Analyzing Soviet Foreign Policy and the Concept of Security

Introduction

In his review of 22 selected American studies of Soviet foreign policy, Welch calls for a greater “soundness of method,…defined essentially as providing clear-cut characterization well substantiated by the data.”¹ His judgment of these studies by no means suggests that this scientific standard had been met by the end of the 1960’s. He concludes that “with the notable exception of Triska there exists no thoughtful, dispassionate analysis of the subject in its temporal entirety.”²

Welch stresses, in particular, two necessary improvements in the field of analysis. The first concerns the ending of the lively debate on methods, including such issues as the Soviet motivating force, the nature of the Soviet polity, and the validity of Kremlinology and comparative studies. According to him, these discussions “contribute little to resolution of the concrete problem of how to proceed in order to more firmly establish the nature of the specific subject under investigation.” ³ Second, and most important, the conceptual framework should fit the data. Disquisitions on method in analyzing Soviet conduct in general and Soviet foreign policy should “center on the meeting point of general concept and datum, which is the crux of the whole matter.”⁴

More than a decade has gone by since Welch’s evaluation, but still the debate goes on and the fit between concept and datum remains the subject of contending approaches to Soviet foreign policy. This is not only justifiable? it cannot be otherwise. Unless the lively debate turns into scholarly dispute, or worse, envy, contending theories are instructive and useful for “raising an infant” of common concern, Sovietology⁵.

In this chapter a few introductory remarks will be made about methodological and data constraints. Next, some major paradigms of Soviet politics will be described and their merits and shortcomings indicated. Proceeding on the advances made in the field of Soviet studies some general concepts of political theory which are equally relevant for the Soviet case will be outlined. This section will be concluded by listing the main elements of an integrated approach to Soviet foreign policy. The second section will look in greater detail at questions of East-West relations, with reference to the concept of security.

Methodological and Data Constraints

Despite Welch’s rather pessimistic conclusion, Soviet foreign policy analysis had—and has during the past decade—made considerable progress in accumulating knowledge as well as in applying social sciences theories. The use of political theory has resulted in helpful explanations and in turn, the application of numerous techniques and methods has clarified their relevance for the political (Soviet) setting, thus helping “to facilitate their use by theorists.” ⁶

Admittedly, scholarly appreciation of the multi-faceted process of decision-making in the Soviet Union has been rather slow, but few analysts today maintain the notion of THE Soviet Union conducting foreign policy as a unitary, rational actor. Although descriptions based on rational state actors are of great help for first orientation, they are a far cry from explaining foreign policy because of the total neglect of the question “how politics within a government influence decisions and actions ostensibly directed outward.”⁷ Indeed, it is a safe claim that the biggest bureaucracy, the “U.S.S.R. incorporated” ⁸ fits in more than one way the general conclusions of theories of large-scale organizations and bureaucratic politics. The analyst should at least assume the presence of a number of “rational” actors. He should assume a leadership oscillating between consensus and conflict, working in a bureaucratic environment of both footdragging and cooperation and of interwoven dependencies between superiors and subordinates, as aptly characterized by Rigby as “crypto-politics” and, more recently, by Janos as “the politics of reciprocities between leaders and their staffs and between administrative staff and the general population.”⁹

Explanations of Soviet politics have been only partial, in most cases embracing merely some aspects of the whole and thereby risking overemphasis on features inherent in that particular approach, while overlooking others. The analyst “must be concerned with the total behavior of a foreign state, not with some arbitrary aspects of it.”¹⁰ Of course, since no framework will ever extend “total behavior,” imperfection is inevitable. With regard to the use of social science models, Allison’s review and comments in his Essence of Decision are particularly worth mentioning. Using three different models for his analysis of the Cuban missile crisis, he is concerned about the “differences in the ways the analysts conceive of the problem, shape the puzzle, unpack the summary questions and pick up pieces of the world in search of an answer.” ¹¹ He calls for an integrated approach in order to avoid a twofold impact on the result of each model:

While at one level three models produce different explanations of the same happening, at a second level the models produce different explanations of quite different occurrences.¹²

Thus the applicability of models is limited, but a careful integration and combination of the partial theories—or if one prefers, an eclectic approach—might avoid the overemphasis inherent in different methods and broaden the scope of analysis and comprehension of Soviet politics and foreign policy. Moreover, this awareness on the part of the analyst may further his contribution to the development of a “rich” theory for understanding and explanation “even though such a theory may not be susceptible to rigorous verification.” ¹³

In addition to these theoretical shortcomings the analyst of Soviet foreign policy faces great problems in gathering evidence. More specifically, data constraints considerably hamper the applicability of some approaches, since “successful manipulation of even the most rigorous model must be based on a solid foundation of prior established knowledge.”¹⁴ As Triska pointed out with regard to the difficulty of linking the many pieces of “micro-information” to the “political macro-level,” “I see the problem less in terms of approach than in terms of access and data.” ¹⁵

The evidence available for a study of Soviet foreign policy consists of: (a) spoken and written words of Soviet actors; (b) officially adopted policies; (c) actual Soviet conduct of foreign relations; and (d) accumulated knowledge in the West about the Soviet Union, including quantitative data such as economic figures and military capabilities, (a) and (b) differ mainly in degree, but may indicate disagreement or conflict among the actors. The “Peace Program” officially adopted at the XXIV CPSU Congress in 1971 can be seen as the prevailing political line to which others are committed and by which they are restricted in their own articulations ¹⁶. Such an explicit program is however subject to modification, especially during the stage of implementation. Besides, official programs such as the “Peace Program” are often put in general terms and need much elaboration and refinement. Also, after a policy is adopted there is still room for contending views and their expression.

With regard to the evaluation of Soviet data, two other observations would seem to be in order. The first concerns the critical assumption of how much credit one should give to Soviet sources and policy articulations of the leaders. The answer, bluntly put, is: quite a bit. Given its importance, considerable attention will be given troughout this study to the fact that Soviet leaders, too, communicate their views and that they need to clarify policy directions. Kremlinologists like Conquest and Tatu have proven the usefulness of an analysis of policy positions on the basis of ‘communications, especially when tensions occur or changes are proposed¹⁷ In particular, Chapter II should be seen’ as an attempt to indicate how clearly and how much earlier the West could and even should have recognized the genuineness of the proposed policy changes in the Soviet Union¹⁸

This leads to a second observation concerning the perennial question—commonly surrounded by political confusion—of intentions and capabilities. It is regrettable that governments often pay little attention to policy analyses and—admittedly, on the much firmer ground of hard facts and figures—tend to adopt the popular, albeit questionable slogan that “intentions can change overnight.” To be sure, Soviet military power is a hard fact, whereas intentions are enigmatic and uncertain, and are mostly not given the benefit of the doubt in the antagonistic East-West relations¹⁹

Yet, distinction must be made between capability analysis and policy analysis of Soviet power. Capability analyses allow the researcher to make conclusions about possibilities, the technical options to hand. The picture drawn from articulations of Soviet actors, however, enables the analyst to infer the more or less probable policies of the Soviet Union. There is no reason to give free rein to worsecase thinking and merely to plan according to the possible options of the adversary. Rational politics abide by more or less probable scenarios. Probability must therefore be based on the Soviet actor’s perceptions and his views on facts and values, while taking into account the actual measurable possibilities of Soviet power²⁰. Such balanced analyses of the available Soviet data can constitute a valuable contribution to Sovietology. Exaggerations and distortions of “hard evidence” and neglect of policy analysis, whether occuring in the political or the academic realm, can be redressed²¹.

In sum, the analyst’s framework for understanding and explaining Soviet foreign policy should correspond to the basic, though exacting, requirement that it fit the Soviet political setting and the available data, while at the same time making the maximum use of the integrated and combined theoretical knowledge. He should neither fill the evidence gap with conclusions derived from his model nor conceal theoretical deficiencies by inflated and abundant “evidence.” ²²

Western Approaches to the Soviet Political Setting

As in all political systems, the distribution of power is of “critical importance” in Soviet politics. Soviet studies, whether paradigmatically founded on totalitarian, Kremlinological or interest-group/pluralist conceptions, largely describe and characterize the Soviet system in terms of power relationships and “diffusion of power.” But, as argued above, characterization and explanatory value vary with each approach. A brief review of the three approaches to this and other concepts of “critical importance” may be useful here.

The totalitarian model. Odom, with this criterion of Huntington in mind, seems to be on target when he defends the totalitarian model precisely because it “emphasizes what is truly important in Soviet politics; a high degree of centralized power with policy initiative wholly reserved for the center.” ²³

There is indeed broad agreement in the West about the location and centralization of power in the Soviet Union. Odom is also right to warn advocates of the “group approach,” which “sins by encouraging one to notice the powerful center only dimly out of the corner of one’s eye.”²⁴ But seems to overreact regarding the location of “initiative” in his rejecting rather than “Dissenting View on the Group Approach.” First, although Party dominance is generally admitted, this “center of power” is an elastic notion and involves many persons and groups at various levels. Furthermore, however centralized the level of an initiative may be, the totalitarian model does not explain the origin and nature of that initiative. Except for this specific “critical” characteristic, the political process remains obscure. The totalitarian model is indeed on slippery ground when facing Huntington’s two other criteria: the comparative and the dynamic strength. Has the totalitarian model survived “comparative communism?” Brzezinski seems more correct and more flexible than Odom when he reviews—in more than one respect—his own contribution to Soviet studies.

Many of the conventional concepts and tools of research that were useful during the Stalinist era no longer served to explain Soviet politics in the post-Stalin era or the complex nature and functioning of fourteen different ruling Communist parties, operating within a wide variety of geographical and cultural settings and in countries at various stages of socio-economic development. It was not surprising, therefore, that a new generation of political scientists, recognizing the difference among Communist systems during the 1950’s and early 1960’s, turned to the new concepts and techniques being developed by their colleagues in other subfields of the discipline. ²⁵

Finally, the d...