The "Europeanization" of Moscow's Asia Policy

THE EUROPEANIZATION" OF_ MOSCOW'S ASIA POLICY Richard N. Haass ?,?t much of Soviet and indeed Russian history, the inhabitants of the Kremlin have cast their gaze west, toward Europe and across the Atlantic . Peter the Great believed that the key to modernizing his empire was to be found in the more advanced societies of Western Europe. His heirs had more basic concerns, as it was the West —Napoleon's France, Great Britain and France in the Crimea, and the Kaiser's Germany—that posed the principal threats to Russian security in the century and a half before the 1917 revolution. The twentieth century and the establishment of communism in what became the Soviet Union did little to change this pattern. The country and the Communist party have always been dominated by ethnic Russians and to a lesser extent by other Slavs originally from lands west of the Urals. Marxist ideology was a European import; revolution was to have spread first to the advanced industrial societies of Europe. Threats to Soviet security came principally from the West: from armies of white counterrevolutionaries after the revolution, from Nazi Germany in the 1940s, and from the United States and its European allies since World War II. This is not to suggest that the Russians ignored the Far East. The disastrous conflict withJapan early this century underscored the neglect Richard N. Haass is lecturer in public policy at theJohn F. Kennedy School of Government and, senior research associate at Harvard University's Center for Science and International Affairs. Formerly an official in the departments of state and defense, he is the author of Congressional Power: Implicationsfor American Security Policy (London : International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1979) and coeditor of Superpower Arms Control: Setting the Record Straight (Cambridge, Mass.: The Ballinger Publishing Co., 1987). 127 128 SAIS REVIEW of Asian Russia under the czars. Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev largely continued this neglect, although support for China's Communists—in large part to create a friendly bulwark against Japanese agression— became an important and initially successful objective of Soviet foreign policy. Nevertheless, World War II was almost entirely a European experience for the Soviet Union; the Soviets entered the Pacific war late and mostly symbolicly. During the first two decades of the postwar era the Soviets were preoccupied with developments to their west rather than their east. There were important exceptions to this, notably the Korean War, the wooing of neutralist India and Indonesia, and the 1958 Taiwan Straits crisis. Even so, it was China that became most directly involved in Korea, and the Soviet Union refused to assist China. Indeed, Moscow's interest and involvement in Asian and Pacific developments did not grow significantly until the 1960s. At that time its attention increased because of the falling out with China and the emergence of a hostile communist giant on the Soviet Union's long and sparsely populated southern and eastern frontiers . U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia marked a major escalation in U.S. military presence in the region, which was already considerable given the naval and air power of the U.S. Seventh Fleet and the U.S. forces stationed in South Korea and Japan. The emergence of Japan as an economic superpower with growing actual and potential military strength added to the Soviet perception of external threat emanating from the East. Moscow's interests in the Far East further increased because of the rising importance of Soviet Asia as a source of energy and other raw materials. The Soviet responded to these trends with ambitious plans for the economic development of Siberia, including the construction of a second rail link from the Urals to the Pacific; a greater military presence in both Asia and the Pacific; and a diplomacy designed to isolate China, intimidate Japan, and provide support to states and forces competing with governments backed by the United States. It is the military and diplomatic dimensions of Soviet policy that deserve particular amplification. The increase in military force consisted ofthree principal elements. The earliest change in Soviet military presence occurred along the Sino-Soviet border. The buildup began in the early 1960s, soon after it became obvious that the relationship between...