China, the United States and the Soviet Union

Tripolarity and Policy Making in the Cold War

Robert S. Ross

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781563242540
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315287638
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Sécurité nationale

This text considers the importance of various factors which influenced the policies of each country during the Cold War including strategic considerations, domestic politics and ideology.

1
Introduction

Robert S. Ross and Herbert J. Ellison

The chapters in this volume analyze the international and domestic sources of foreign policy making for the superpowers and China during the critical cold war years of the 1970s and 1980s. This was a period characterized by dramatic and fundamental changes in international relations. It witnessed first the blossoming and then the collapse of U.S.-Soviet détente; the depths of Sino-Soviet conflict, including a war and a Soviet nuclear threat against China, and the fulfillment of Sino-Soviet rapprochement in the midst of the Beijing democracy movement; and the drama of U.S.-Chinese rapprochement, the development of U.S.-Chinese economic and cultural ties, and the ultimate demise of U.S.-Chinese cooperation in the bloodied streets of Beijing. All of these developments occurred while war raged in Indochina between Americans and Vietnamese and then among Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Chinese. They also occurred against the backdrop of dramatic domestic developments within these countries—the resignation of Richard Nixon, the reign and death of Mao Zedong and the rise of Deng Xiaoping, and the succession to Leonid Brezhnev and the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev. The era came to a dramatic conclusion when relations among Washington, Moscow, and Beijing again transformed. By 1989 the cold war had ended and the Communist world had collapsed, and China was estranged from both the Soviet Union and the United States.

Great power relations among the United States, the Soviet Union, and China during this critical period of the cold war were distinguished by a significant degree of strategic interdependence. The security of each state was significantly shaped by the nature of the relationship between the other two. This state of affairs has been characterized by a number of terms, including tripolarity, triangular politics, and the strategic triangle. The precise terminology is less important than the common analytical perspective, which is that the strategic relationship among these three states was qualitatively different and more vital than any other three-way relationship in international politics during the post-World War II era.

The authors all approach this pivotal era in international politics with the premise that there was a strategic triangle. But they do not stop there. They ask to what extent the triangular structure of the 1970s and 1980s determined each country’s foreign policy toward the other two states in the triangle. Thus, each chapter explicitly rejects the notion that the international structure determined foreign policy—that there were mechanistic interactions among the powers. Rather, they assess the contribution of triangular considerations in policy making as well as the interplay between triangular considerations and influential domestic factors in policy making, such as ideology and domestic politics. Furthermore, they acknowledge that the role of both tripolarity and these other factors in policy making varied over time. Twenty years is a significant period in international relations, and the sources of policy making for each country changed considerably during the 1970s and 1980s, despite the existence of a triangular structure.

Tripolarity and Foreign Policy

The following chapters, therefore, address the role of both tripolarity and domestic considerations in U.S.-Soviet-Chinese interactions. They assume that neither set of factors dominated the policy-making process to the exclusion of the other. Rather, they acknowledge that a rich, textured, and nuanced understanding of triangular behavior requires attention to the multifaceted nature of policy making. The authors consider the changing mix of tripolarity and state-level factors in policy making, giving special attention both to the particular country and to the change that can occur over twenty years in the domestic and international policymaking environments.

The Impact of Tripolarity on Policy Making

The volume investigates to what extent there was recurring triangle-generated behavior on the part of the three states during the nearly twenty years of the strategic triangle.

A state’s position in a particular international structure creates characteristic behavior. In the case of the strategic triangle, a central issue concerns how each state, due to its position vis-à-vis its counterparts, developed a unique response to triangular pressures. One key issue concerns national power. Not all powers are created equal. Certainly China during the 1970s and 1980s was significantly less powerful than the United States and the Soviet Union; it was not a superpower. The chapters involving China acknowledge this fact and consider both its impact on China’s response to tripolarity with respect to policies toward the United States and the Soviet Union, and its impact on the superpowers’ policies toward China.

The impact of tripolarity also varies in accordance with the nature of particular bilateral relationships. To the extent that there were recurring patterns of behavior derived from participation in the strategic triangle, they should have been reflected in distinct trends in relations between allies and between adversaries. The contributors to this volume recognize that each state’s bilateral policy toward the other two states possessed its own characteristic triangular dynamic. Thus, the volume approaches the impact of tripolarity by examining the policymaking process of each country within its two bilateral relationships.

From the triangular perspective, the volume also addresses the negotiating dynamics among the three states. It discusses the impact of changing diplomatic relations within the triangle on bilateral negotiating policies in U.S.-Chinese relations, Sino-Soviet relations, and U.S.-Soviet relations. In particular, it considers how bilateral negotiating dynamics were altered by each country’s changing relationship with the third country, which could exacerbate or mitigate the effects of enduring power asymmetries. Stephen Sestanovich’s chapter (chapter 6), for example, provides the first rigorous assessment of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s claim that triangular diplomacy was an effective device to promote Soviet flexibility in arms control negotiations. Similarly, Chi Su (see chapter 3) considers the benefit of U.S.-Chinese cooperation to China’s bargaining position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Michael Yahuda (chapter 2) and Robert Ross (chapter 7) consider how changing Sino-Soviet relations and U.S.-Soviet relations affected leverage relations in U.S.-Chinese relations.

Ideology, Politics, and Individuals in the Policy-making Process

This attention to bargaining underscores the importance of considering non-triangular factors in policy making. Short-term foreign policy decisions regarding relations with allies and adversaries, including such issues as immediate negotiating positions, response to other countries’ policy shifts, and use of force, cannot be fully explained without reference to nonsystemic factors. International pressures are always relevant, but their ultimate impact occurs in interaction with other factors. Thus, the authors consider, for example, the role of ideology, domestic politics, and leadership in shaping the impact of triangular pressures on policy making. But they also consider the ability of triangular politics to mitigate the impact of domestic factors in policy-making. An understanding of the policymaking process during the 1970s and 1980s requires analysis of both sides of this interactive process.

A central concern to the authors writing on the Soviet Union and China is the ideological implications of each country’s participation in triangular diplomacy. These chapters address two fundamental issues. First, they consider the impact on the legitimacy of their respective leaderships of both the national interest conflict between China and the Soviet Union and their relationships with the United States and the resulting impact on their foreign policies. The chapters by Chi Su, Robert Legvold, and Herbert Ellison (chapters 3, 4, and 5, respectively) pay particular attention to the influence of Chinese and Soviet ideological concerns on each country’s participation in the Sino-Soviet conflict. Michael Yahuda (chapter 2) considers the implications of U.S.-Chinese cooperation on the legitimacy of the Chinese leadership and on China’s U.S. policy.

Second, the chapters do not consider the role of ideology in isolation from strategic factors, however. Although elite ideological concerns can create countervailing pressures to international incentives, the result is anything but predetermined. At times, international factors can suppress the potential policy ramifications of ideological pressures, so that ideological concerns may be expressed in the domestic arena but not alter foreign policy. Alternatively, ideology can reinforce international pressures, so that foreign policy can reflect greater extremes along the amity-enmity continuum than might otherwise be the case. When did triangular pressures contain ideological impulses, and, alternatively, when did ideology join with structure to produce an outcome reflecting the complimentarity of the sources of policy?

Similar questions are raised by the discussions of politics and foreign policy. All of the chapters, but particularly those addressing Chinese and U.S. foreign policy, because Beijing and Washington experienced the most elite contention during the 1970s and 1980s, examine the conflicting pressures chief policymakers experienced due to their two distinct roles—parochial politician and protector of national security. Once again, there is nothing inevitable about the outcome of this conflict. The magnitude of political pressure varies over time—presidential campaign seasons in the United States and the periodic succession struggles in China and the Soviet Union produce heightened pressures on leaders to respond to political concerns. Moreover, even when political pressures are severe, systemic pressures are not necessarily ignored. But as was the case concerning the impact of domestic politics, during the 1970s and 1980s the severity of triangular pressures varied among countries and over time.

Thus, domestic politics do not mechanically influence the policy-making process. At times domestic politics may combine with international pressures to produce a particular policy. Alternatively, there may well be occasions when international pressures are sufficiently severe either to minimize the domestic political debate over foreign policy or to compel elite compliance with foreign policy interests, despite the domestic political costs. When has tripolarity checked political parochialism and when and how does domestic politics mitigate the impact of triangular motivations?

Sometimes a debate over foreign policy reflects not partisan politics but honest differences among policymakers over the appropriate response to triangular pressures. Thus, the optimal response to tripolar circumstances was not always self-evident. What occurred when policymakers miscalculated their country’s position in the strategic triangle and thus carried out counterproductive policy? How did tripolarity create incentives for policy correction? Similarly, policy decisions often require trade-offs between competing objectives, thus giving rise to policy conflict. The result can be an intra-administration battle over policy. What role did bureaucratic infighting play in resolving such conflicts in U.S. policy toward China and the Soviet Union? Alternatively, ongoing international developments can clarify the foreign policy costs and benefits of the competing policy options and affect the outcome of the policy debate. How was this dynamic reflected in triangular diplomacy throughout the 1970s and 1980s?

The chapters on U.S. policy making toward the Soviet Union and toward China directly address these questions. They evaluate the importance of the policy differences between Cyrus Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski regarding U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union and China and the influence of key international events on the course and outcome of the conflict. They also assess the importance of the 1982 transition from Alexander Haig to George Shultz as secretary of state. The two men had very different assessments of the strategic triangle and corresponding policy differences regarding the interplay between the United States’ policies toward China and toward the Soviet Union.

Focus on individuals also requires consideration of the personality of the chief executive or preeminent leader on foreign policy. This is particularly the case concerning the socialist countries; Soviet and Chinese preeminent leaders during the 1970s and 1980s possessed far greater policy-making autonomy than their U.S. counterparts. Thus, as Chi Su shows, it is impossible to discuss the severity of the Sino-Soviet conflict without a discussion of Mao Zedong’s personal contribution to Chinese foreign policy. Similarly, analysis of the transformation in Soviet and Chinese foreign policy in the 1980s requires attention to the roles of Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping, respectively. Understanding change in U.S. foreign policy also requires understanding of leadership perspectives. The chapters on U.S. policy consider the impact on the changes in U.S. triangular diplomacy during the mid-1970s of both Ronald Reagan’s and Jimmy Carter’s personal perspectives on superpower relations and international politics.

After the Cold War

The chapters in this volume stress that the strategic interdependence between the superpowers and China reflected, in part, the heightened tension of their cold war foreign policies. Thus, the chapters consider the implications of the end of the cold war for each country’s bilateral policies and, thus, for triangular diplomacy. The authors, stressing the absence of triangular diplomacy in the post-cold war era, call attention to the changed dynamics of policy making in each country and the implications for their bilateral relationships.

Equally important, the authors consider to what extent the end of the cold war was a function of each of these countries’ responses to triangular pressures. Thus, they evaluate the role of triangular pressures as well as of other factors on the fundamental policy changes that together produced the end of the cold war. In particular, they consider the importance of U.S.-Chinese cooperation on Soviet foreign policy change.

For twenty years, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China engaged in triangular diplomacy. Policy during this period reflected the complex interaction of international and domestic factors in the policy-making process. The chapters in this volume focus on this interaction and consider the changing mix of factors in each country’s policy toward its two counterparts. They do not offer a single answer to the role of tripolarity in policy making. Indeed, they explicitly reject such a notion. Rather, by looking at the impact of the combination of a common international environment with unique national characteristics, the authors suggest an understanding of the role of triangular politics in the policy-making process.

PART I

CHINA

2
The Significance of Tripoiarity in China’s Policy Toward the United States Since 1972

Michael B. Yahuda

The beginnings of triangular diplomacy in 1971 brought the People’s Republic of China immediate recognition as a power of great influence in shaping the strategic relations between the two superpowers. Some North American scholars went so far as to suggest that the world, which used to be structured on bipolar lines, became restructured in the 1970s on a tripolar basis.¹ The debates about the character and significance of tripoiarity have tended to be conducted within the realist perspective. As a result, these debates did not raise the question of the impact of the divergent domestic political systems of the parties concerned on the dynamics of the triangle. Insofar as domestic issues were addressed, it was with concern for the possibly divergent foreign policy courses that domestic struggles for power may engender.

There was thus a paradox that if bipolarity, by common consent, went beyond considerations of power politics to emphasize the existence of a deep divide based on systemic and ideological incompatibilities, somehow tripoiarity could be based on power politics alone. The strains involving the legitimacy and structure of Communist power in both the Soviet Union and China—but especially the latter—in participating in the triangular process tended to be overlooked. Moreover, these strains necessarily intensified when first China, and then the rest of the Communist world, recognized that there was, in truth, but one international economy that operated along capitalist lines and that they had no alternative except to develop relations of interdependency with it.

This chapter first considers the systemic challenges to their domestic legitimacy that China’s leaders confronted as they maneuvered in the complex relationship involving the Soviet Union and the United States in order to advance Chinese interests vis-à-vis the United States. It then examines Chinese policy toward ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• Part I China
• Part II The Soviet Union
• Part III The United States
• Index