Managing U.S.-Soviet Rivalry: Problems of Crisis Prevention

Problems Of Crisis Prevention

Alexander L. George

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429725203
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

This book examines the lessons of the U.S.-Soviet experiment with detente in the 1970s, with particular attention to the effort to develop a basis for cooperating in crisis prevention. It provides a reconceptualization of the problem of moderating U.S.-Soviet rivalry.

1
Introduction

Alexander L. George

The current crisis in U.S.-Soviet relations is less immediately threatening of thermonuclear disaster than was the Cuban missile crisis. But, paradoxically, precisely for this reason the current situation offers a more complex challenge to U.S. and Soviet leaders. Crises such as the one that emerged from Soviet deployment of medium-range missiles into Cuba in 1962 often have an unexpected catalytic effect in facilitating an improvement in relationships between the two parties in the dispute. The shared experience of being on the brink of a possibly disastrous war aroused strong incentives to reexamine the past attitudes and policies that had led to the dangerous crisis. Thus, even before the missile crisis was settled, it had triggered a new determination on the part of both Kennedy and Khrushchev to concert efforts, once the crisis was behind them, to develop a more constructive relationship between their countries. It is often remarked in this connection that the character for "crisis" in the Chinese language has a dual connotation: "threat" and "opportunity." Certainly both of these dimensions of crisis were experienced by U.S. and Soviet leaders during the Cuban missile case. As a result, Kennedy and Khrushchev moved expeditiously to relax tensions and, beginning with the partial test ban treaty of 1963, to create the building blocks of a less volatile and more constructive relationship.

The present crisis in U.S.-Soviet relations is of a different order. It poses dangers that are less urgent and opportunities that are more ambiguous and more difficult to grasp than those of the missile crisis. But although the deterioration of U.S.-Soviet relations has not yet led to a new war-threatening confrontation, it has created dangerous instability and uncertainty in the relationship of the two nations.

Because the present crisis creates no sense of urgency and poses no deadlines for remedial measures, each side has shifted to the other side the burden of responsibility for taking corrective action to restore, or at least to prevent further damage to, the relationship.

Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan doomed whatever possibility that had still remained for Senate ratification of SALT II, each side has succumbed to the temptation of developing its own self-serving account—all the more dangerous because sincerely believed—of why the détente relationship has eroded. As a result, U.S. and Soviet leaders are now operating with sharply conflicting explanations for what went wrong and who is to blame. Neither side displays much willingness to examine critically those of its policy premises and policies that contributed during the decade of the seventies to the development of the present impasse. Instruments of self-justification and assertions of blame are steadily hardening, fueled by new developments such as those in Poland. This inflexibility is leading inexorably to a new group of rigid mind-sets and mutually hostile images that will severely constrain efforts to halt the drift into a new version of the cold war.

At some point in the future, perhaps to bring to a halt the costly and dangerous new arms race that is underway or perhaps as a result of a confrontation in some part of the world that poses the danger of war, the two sides may agree to a new relaxation of tensions. They may then commit themselves to the goal of defusing Cold War II and to the task of developing a more constructive relationship. But will there be a sufficiently clear understanding of what will then be required to place Soviet-U.S. relations on a more stable footing? Unless the time that is now available is utilized by the two sides to develop an informed, balanced, sufficiently shared understanding of what went awry in the détente of the seventies, an improvement in the tone of U.S.-Soviet relations is likely to result in no more than temporary palliatives that will give way to a new round of disillusionment and hostility.

This book provides an analytical appraisal of the "lessons" of the experiment in détente of the seventies. It is concerned less with assessing blame for the erosion of détente than with understanding flaws in détente's conceptualization and implementation. Accordingly, the chapters that follow seek to identify those constraints that made Soviet and U.S. leaders unwilling or unable to limit their striving for influence and advantage in third areas. The chapters that follow will also analyze various types of difficulties that complicated whatever efforts the two superpowers did make—or might have made—during this period to cooperate in one way or another to avoid confrontations and to prevent their global rivalry from damaging their overall détente relationship.

"Crisis prevention," as it was called, was one of the important objectives of the détente process that Nixon and Brezhnev set into motion in 1972. This objective, however, was not clearly defined. Soviet leaders were interested primarily in avoiding crises that raised the danger of war between the two superpowers. Nixon and Kissinger shared this hope, but, increasingly over time, they emphasized that crisis prevention should include the avoidance of crises in third areas resulting from or exacerbated by assertive Soviet behavior that damaged Western interests even though these crises did not create the danger of a U.S.-Soviet military clash. The conception of détente held by U.S. leaders and, indeed, by many congressional leaders and much of the interested public, therefore, included a belief that Soviet adherence to the goal of "crisis prevention" implied a willingness on Moscow's part generally to moderate its foreign policy behavior in third areas. The failure of the two sides to agree on what the goal of crisis prevention was to mean in practice was obscured in the Basic Principles Agreement (BPA) that Nixon and Brezhnev signed at their first summit in Moscow in May 1972. This critical ambiguity was the source of much later difficulty in the seventies.

If the objective of crisis prevention was left ambiguous, the means for achieving the objective articulated by Nixon and Brezhnev only compounded the likelihood of failure and discord. Thus the Basic Principles Agreement was described as providing "rules" of conduct by means of which the global competition of the two superpowers would be somehow moderated and regulated. Subsequently, as we shall see, assertive Soviet foreign policy actions in third areas were regarded as in violation of the rules or code of conduct embodied in the BPA. In turn, the Soviets could and did denounce the unilateral policy pursued by the Nixon administration in the Middle East as contrary to their understanding of détente.

One of the purposes of this study, therefore, is to evaluate the crisis-prevention regime the two sides created in 1972 to serve as part of the détente process. A few preliminary remarks regarding the primitive state of crisis-prevention theory in the burgeoning field of strategic studies will serve to introduce the subject and to indicate its relevance to the development of U.S.-Soviet relations in the post-World War II era.

Contributors to strategic studies have given a great deal of attention to a variety of urgent problems that the two superpowers have had to cope with since World War II—problems of deterrence, crisis management, escalation, coercive diplomacy, arms control, war termination, and avoidance of misperceptions and miscalculations. The equally important problem of how the United States and the Soviet Union might moderate their global rivalry in order to avoid dangerous confrontations has received much less attention. Crisis prevention may well be considered the orphan of strategic studies.

Part of the explanation for the relative neglect of crisis prevention in strategic studies is that during the cold war the highest priority had to be given to deterrence and crisis management. The great gulf that divided the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to make futile the utilization of diplomacy and negotiation to resolve or moderate the conflicts of interest between the two superpowers. This is not to say that preventing crises was not an important objective during the cold war, but policymakers relied largely on deterrence for that purpose. Deterrence was supposed to discourage encroachments on the free world that might result in crises of war. Even during the cold war, however, the two superpowers found other ways to limit their competition and rivalry in third areas to avoid potential conflict. A notable instance of cooperation in crisis prevention was the Austrian State Treaty of 1955 that created a neutral buffer state and removed it from the ongoing competition between the two superpowers in Europe. To be sure, use of the term "cooperation" in this instance should not obscure the fact that Soviet leaders were willing to accept a unified, neutralized Austrian state to replace the division of that country into occupied zones because they hoped that this concession would further their objective of encouraging neutralism in West Germany.¹ Nonetheless, the Austrian case is instructive and encouraging in calling attention to the fact that possibilities for U.S.-Soviet cooperation in crisis prevention may emerge simply from mutual selfish interest, even in the absence of détente. Admittedly, the creation of neutral buffer states can take place only under special conditions that may or may not emerge again in the future, as, for example, in Afghanistan.

Another instance of U.S.-Soviet cooperation in the interest of crisis prevention occurred during 1961-1962 when President Kennedy, determined to decommit the United States from its involvement in Laos, induced Premier Khrushchev to help bring about a cease-fire there as a prerequisite to American participation in a reconvened Geneva Conference on Laos. At their Vienna summit talks in June 1961 the two leaders agreed that what was at stake in Laos was not worth the risk of a superpower confrontation. In a joint communiqué Kennedy and Khrushchev pledged "their support for a neutral and independent Laos under a government chosen by the Laotians themselves, and of international agreements for insuring that neutrality and independence...."² The two sides recognized that achievement of the objective would require cooperation by other states, and they agreed to act in order to ensure the compliance of members of their political blocs. Eventually, in July 1962, a cease-fire was established, and fourteen nations signed the Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos. Although these arrangements were short-lived, they did enable Kennedy to achieve his overriding objective of conducting "an honorable retreat from a strategically weak position."³

Although deterrence was an essential part of U.S. containment policy, it soon became evident that it was an unreliable, imperfect strategy at middle and lower levels of conflict. Because deterrence did not prevent dangerous crises from erupting during the cold war, the United States and the Soviet Union were forced to develop an understanding of the requirements and modalities of crisis management. Fortunately the two superpowers have been remarkably successful in cooperating during crises to avoid military clashes between their armed forces. But both sides recognized that skill in crisis management could not be counted upon to prevent war in the future; especially after the Cuban missile crisis, both sides saw the need to move beyond reliance on deterrence and beyond cooperation in managing crises to deal more directly with conflicts of interest that pose the danger of war. The onset of détente following the Cuban missile crisis brought new opportunities and new modalities for crisis prevention, for now there was a shared disposition to utilize negotiation and accommodation to settle some of the long-standing conflicts of interest that had been bones of contention during the cold war.

In the era of détente, U.S. and Soviet leaders rediscovered and applied some diplomatic practices for moderating conflicts that had been a standard feature of classical diplomacy. They negotiated settlements of many unresolved issues of the cold war, stabilizing the status of Berlin and recognizing the existence of the two German states and the division of Europe.

However, the problem of regulating U.S.-Soviet rivalry and competition in the Third World—the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean—still remained. U.S.-Soviet competition in these areas was and continues to be a matter of concern for several reasons. It frequently adds to regional or local instability, even when one or the other side does not intend to exploit such instability for immediate gains. It increases the likelihood of dangerous crises, such as the Middle East war of October 1973, into which the two superpowers may be drawn. And last but not least, during the 1970s the inability of the two sides to moderate their global competition steadily undermined U.S. support for the entire policy of détente with the USSR and, in particular, for the ratification of SALT II.

The objective of crisis prevention and, related to it, the task of managing U.S.-Soviet rivalry in third areas takes on special urgency, to be sure, in the modern era of thermonuclear weapons. But the problem is not a novel one in the history of international relations, and, despite the special complexities crisis prevention has acquired in the modern era, it has not become so different and so idiosyncratic that we can afford to neglect giving some attention to how great powers have gone about it in the past. Accordingly, this study includes a detailed review of the means utilized by the great powers that made up the European balance-of-power system to regulate and manage their rivalry in order to avoid unwanted crises. In Chapter 3 Paul Gordon Lauren identifies and illustrates nine diplomatic options that the European powers utilized from time to time to regulate their rivalries and to reduce the likelihood of crises: (1) arrangements for mutual and collective decisionmaking; (2) the creation of buffer states; (3) establishment of neutral states, zones, and demilitarized areas; (4) arrangements for localizing and restricting regional conflicts; (5) agreements to limit the flow of weapons and other resources to third areas; (6) careful delineation and definition of interests and/or areas of involvement in third areas; (7) agreements to avoid unilateral action in third areas and, if necessary, to intervene only via multilateral action; (8) arrangements for the pacific settlement of disputes; (9) agreements for communication and advance notification of unilateral actions to be taken in third areas.

The various modalities employed by European statesmen in the nineteenth century were imbedded, to be sure, in a relatively well-defined and well-structured international system, and the leaders of the great powers were generally committed to this system's preservation and maintenance. The European balance-of-power system was shattered by World War I and has not since been replaced by a well-defined or well-organized global international system. The modalities of crisis prevention and the experience gained during the nineteenth century, of course, can only be selectively adapted for possible use by the United States and the Soviet Union in the contemporary era. Explicit spheres-of-influence arrangements that played an important role in regulating the rivalry of the great imperial powers in the nineteenth century are much less acceptable in the modern era. Similarly, collective decisionmaking by the superpowers to settle regional conflicts, even when it is undertaken in order to reduce the likelihood of possibly dangerous U.S.-Soviet confrontations, is likely to trigger fears of a superpower condominium that will harm the interests of other states. Notwithstanding these and other constraints, familiarity with the experience of and modalities for crisis prevention in the nineteenth century should be at least suggestive, and some of these modalities may be adaptable and usable in the contemporary situation. Particularly useful for this purpose are some of the general issues and "lessons" derived by Lauren from his examination of the nineteenth century experience.

The experiment in devising a U.S.-Soviet crisis-prevention regime was an integral part of a broader, complex set of understandings, hopes, and expectations associated with the détente process that Nixon and Brezhnev set into motion. The mutual desire to manage U.S.-Soviet global competition was one of several objectives that together composed the long-range goal of détente. The workings and the fate of the quite imperfect crisis-prevention regime were expected even at the time to be inextricably related to the development of the détente process as a whole. It is neither desirable nor possible, therefore, to separate a study of the experiment in crisis prevention from an analysis of the whole détente arrangement entered into by Nixon and Brezhnev in 1972. Chapter 2 examines the objectives and strategy of the Nixon-Kissinger approach to détente and notes the extent to which the Soviet and U.S. conceptions of détente overlapped and diverged. The new relationship that the two superpowers set out to create to replace the confrontation-prone relationship of the cold war was burdened from the start by critical ambiguities and latent disagreements on important issues that created mutually inconsistent hopes and expectations regarding the benefits to be realized from that new détente relationship.

Particularly important were the divergent understandings regarding the countries' respective roles in the Middle East that the two sides brought back from the Moscow summit. The importance of these misperceptions can be fully appreciated only if U.S.-Soviet rivalry in the Middle East prior to the signing of the Basic Principles Agreement is taken into account. From this earlier experience Kissinger had concluded that the Soviets were bent on perpetuating a "no war, no peace" situation in the Middle East. He advocated and finally persuaded Nixon to pursue a policy aimed at rolling back Soviet influence in the Middle East. Far from modifying this policy objective after détente was formalized in the Basic Principles Agreement, Kissinger, as he makes clear in his memoirs, used détente to further his efforts to reduce or eliminate Soviet influence in the Middle East. Because of its critical importance, the subject of Soviet policy in the Middle East from 1967 to 1972 is analyzed by George Breslauer in Chapter 4, which reexamines the thesis that the Soviets wished to maintain a state of hostility, without an actual war, in the Middle East.

Chapter 5 traces the origins of the Basic Principles Agreement and explains how and why it came to contain important ambiguities regarding the objectives and modalities of crisis prevention. Chapter 5 also traces the origins of a second crisis-prevention agreement, the Agreement on Prevention of Nuclear War, signed by Nixon and Brezhnev at their second summit in June 1973, and calls attention to obscurities and loopholes in its provisions for U.S.-Soviet consultation to head off dangerous crises. This chapter also notes the absence of any policy planning in the Nixon administration either before or after the signing of these agreements to address the problems and procedures for implementing them.

In Chapter 6 Coit Blacker describes the Soviet conception of détente and the Soviet leaders' motivation in seeking to formalize it in the Basic Principles document. Blacker also infers from statements by Soviet leaders at the time the considerable hopes and expectations they attached to the BPA, a highly important document in their view.

The first test of the U.S.-Soviet crisis-prevention regime was a particularly severe one. Chapter 7 traces developments leading to the Egyptian-Syrian attack on Israel of October 6, 1973. Were the policies and actions of the USSR and the United States in the Middle East in the sixteen months since the signing of the Basic Principles Agreement and the three months since the Agreement on Prevention of Nuclear War (APNW) consistent with the obligations both countries had assumed to moderate their rivalry and to cooperate in crisis prevention? Had the two sides operated with restraint since then and avoided seeking unilateral advantages in the Middle East, as the BPA seemed to require? Did the Soviet leaders...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Détente: The Search for a "Constructive" Relationship
• 3 Crisis Prevention in Nineteenth-Century Diplomacy
• 4 Soviet Policy in the Middle East, 1967-1972: Unalterable Antagonism or Collaborative Competition?
• 5 The Basic Principles Agreement of 1972: Origins and Expectations
• 6 The Kremlin and Detente: Soviet Conceptions, Hopes, and Expectations
• 7 The Arab-Israeli War of October 1973: Origins and Impact
• 8 The African Terrain and U.S.-Soviet Conflict in Angola and Rhodesia: Some Implications for Crisis Prevention
• 9 Missed Opportunities for Crisis Prevention: The War of Attrition and Angola
• 10 The Ogaden War: Some Implications for Crisis Prevention
• 11 Negotiated Limitations on Arms Transfers: First Steps Toward Crisis Prevention?
• 12 Crisis Prevention in Cuba
• 13 Why Détente Failed: An Interpretation
• 14 The Strategy of Preventive Diplomacy in Third World Conflicts
• 15 Crisis Prevention Reexamined
• The Contributors
• Index