The Erosion of the Superpowers: The Military Consequences of Economic Distress

THE EROSION OF THE SUPERPOWERS: THE MILITARY CONSEQUENCES OF ECONOMIC DISTRESS Walter Goldstein Conventional wisdom suggests that the nuclear condominium exercised by the United States and the Soviet Union will probably survive the century. But there is an element of doubt. The relative economic power of both superpowers has been reduced in recent years as their own allies and trade rivals have surpassed their sluggish gross national product (GNP) growth rates and both powers face some measure of economic distress . Nevertheless, it is assumed that their strategic nuclear duopoly will remain unchallenged. Equipped with 25,000 strategic and tactical nuclear warheads apiece, and with armed forces several million strong, the two countries stand alone as the prime users of coercion in the international order. When the two world leaders met at the 1987 White House summit "fiesta," they enjoyed a lordly sense of preeminence. The level of confidences exchanged between General Secretary Gorbachev and President Reagan required no third party or interlocutor valable. Both chieftains spoke boldly for their own collective security alliances as they talked about changing the strategic balance and disbanding theater nuclear forces in central Europe. Each made a formal show of consulting loyal allies after the private feast had concluded, more to display good manners than to acknowledge collégial obligation. The immediate purpose of the 1987 White House summit was to remove intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) from central Europe, to negotiate longer-term proposals for the strategic arms reduction talks (START), and to promote a range of détente understandings between the Walter Goldstein is professor of international relations at Rockefeller College at the State University of New York in Albany and the Ira Wade professor of international political economy at the SAIS Bologna Center in Italy. 51 52 SAIS REVIEW two alliance leaders. The ulterior motives of the summit duo were less visible. Both needed to strengthen their power standoff against their own allies and against the other's global probing. More important was the realization by both sides that neither could afford to maintain current obligations. It was becoming too expensive to maintain (1) the forces needed to police their worldwide spheres of influence; (2) the nuclear arsenals to guarantee an extended and assured deterrence; and (3) the commitments to preserve hegemony in key areas of the Third World. Their own allies in Europe were divided, if not unhelpful, about paying for the modernization of conventional forces. And the two leaders themselves had already had to back down from expensive engagements in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, from their endless involvements in the Middle East and in the tropical jungles of Central America, and from the national liberation wars of Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, the emperors had discovered that they were covered with fewer and fewer clothes; they needed to ask what it was they could do, if they ever managed to collaborate, to restore their ascendancy. Historians will probably argue in future years about which factor was most instrumental in forcing the superpowers to modify their global positions in the late 1980s. One school of historians will surely insist that the chief factor prompting change was the vast expenditures incurred by the escalation of the arms race. President Reagan champions this explanation . He emphasizes that his administration spent more than $2 trillion on military programs, including a serious plan to develop a spacebased defense system, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which forced the Kremlin to modulate the arms race. A second school will argue that more of the credit is due to Mikhail Gorbachev; he seized power from the old guard bureaucrats and Stalinists in the Kremlin, at considerable risk, to proffer arms control and regional settlements that even President Reagan's stalwart cold warriors could not refuse. A third school is likely to suggest that domestic weariness confronted both societies in the 1980s. The rhetoric of ideological confrontation and cold war enthusiasm had begun to lose its saliency as payments for the arms race multiplied beyond control. Strenuous demands were raised by constituencies ranging from youth and women's groups to angry ethnic minorities and antinuclear activists. Critics questioned the call by bemedaled generals to fund...