The International Sources of Soviet Change

The mtemationd Sources o f Soviet I T h e Cold War has Daniel Deudney and G. John lkenberry ended, shifting global political life on a scale not seen in fifty years. At the heart of these changes were domestic and foreign policy choices made by the Soviet Union. In domestic affairs, the Communist Party gave up its political monopoly, then collapsed, glasnost has aired historical crimes and failings, and socialist economics is being abandoned. In foreign affairs, the Soviets have acquiesced in the complete collapse of communist client regimes in Eastern Europe and the unification of Germany, accepted far-reaching force reduction and disarmament agreements, sought to strengthen the United Nations, and embarked upon a broad effort to solve regional conflicts .*The speed and magnitude of these changes, accelerating in the wake of the abortive August coup, have exhilarated world public opinion and stunned Western foreign policy elites. They have also overturned much of the conventional wisdom in the West about the permanence of the East-West Daniel Deudney is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of theforthcoming book Pax Atomica: States and Republics in Sustainable Global Security Systems. G. john lkenberry is Assistant Professor of Politics and Znternational Affairs at Princeton University; during 1991-92, he is an Znternational Affairs Fellow on the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. He is author of Reasons of State: Oil Politics and the Capacities of American Government , and co-author of The State; he is currently writing a book about the international spread of policy doctrines. The authors would like to acknowledge helpful comments and suggestions by Henry Bienen, Matthew Evangelista, Andrew Farkas, Sam Kim, Rey Koslowski, Charles Kupchan, David Meyer, Henry Nau, Alvin Rubinstein, Stephen Walt, and William Wohlforth. Research assistance was provided by Geoffrey Herrera and Naomi Mobed. Research for this paper was supported by the Peter B. Lewis Fund and the Center of International Studies, Princeton. 1. For overviews of Soviet foreign policy change, see Matthew Evangelista, ”The New Soviet Approach to Security,” World Policy journal, Vol. 3, No. 1(Fall 1986),pp. 561-599; Robert Legvold, ”The Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 1(America and the World, 1988/89), pp. 82-98; David Holloway, ”State, Society, and the Military Under Gorbachev,” International Security, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Winter 1989/90), pp. 5-24; Jack Snyder, ”The Gorbachev Revolution: A Waning of Soviet Expansionism?” Znternational Security, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Winter 1987/88), pp. 93-131; William Hyland, The Cold War 1s Over (New York: Knopf, 1990); Michael MccGwire, Perestroika and Soviet National Security (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1991); David Armstrong and Erik Goldstein, eds., The End ofthe Cold War (London: Frank Cass, 1990);Andrei V. Kozyrev, “The New Soviet Attitude Toward the United Nations,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer 1990), pp. 41-53. International Security, Winter 1991192 (Vol. 16, No 3) 01991by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 74 The International Sources of Soviet Change I 75 conflict, the possibility of change in the communist world, and the relative strengths of the competing camps.2 Not only have these changes been sweeping and unexpected, but they have been peaceful as well, at least at the international level. Many students of Great Power politics have long held that sudden and significant changes in the status of Great Powers, particularly authoritarian ones, are likely to be ~ i o l e n t . ~ In the modern state system, it is hard to find a precedent for sudden and peaceful change in the status of a central Great Power and in the pattern and intensity of inter-state rivalry. The half century of Cold War, marked by unexpected stability and peace among the Great Powers, has been labeled the ”long p e a ~ e . ” ~ The postwar period has now also experienced ”major peaceful change.” Given the centrality of the Cold War over the last forty-five years and the importance of the Soviet experiment in the twentieth century, explanations 2. The consensus of foreign policy elites in the West was that the East-West conflict would...