The Death of Détente?

The Death of Wtente? I IDimitri K. Simes IT h e Soviet invasion of Afghanistan signified the end of an era in the U.S.-Soviet relationship. The superpowers, having been on a collision course for a number of years, had become so mutually disillusioned that the crisis over Afghanistan was probably perceived as a blessing of sorts by a number of officials in both Washington and Moscow. After prolonged suffering, the patient known as detente had finally passed away, and there would be no need for further artificiallife support treatment. In the United States, an influential school of thought clearly felt that if the Soviet ”fraternal” aggression against Afghanistan had not happened, it would have had to be invented to provide the last straw to break detente’s back. And there is evidence that there was joy among some Soviet elite circles at the break as well. The world became wonderfully simple once again-us against them, good guys against bad guys. Ironically, a number of statements coming from the U.S. and Soviet capitals in the aftermath of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan appear to be almost interchangeable in their self-righteousness and rhetorical overkill. Both sides talk about Afghanistan as a watershed and as representing a qualitative change in each other’s policies. Both pledge toughness and proclaim that they are not going to be pushed around. Their respective pronouncements are more of an effort to influence the West Europeans and the third world than an exercise in bilateral diplomacy. In a way, leaders of the United States and the USSR almost talk through rather than to each other. Spokesmen of both nations voice grave pessimism regarding prospects for the U.S.-Soviet relationship in the years to come. Prophecies of doom and gloom are contending for the status of a new foreignpolicy orthodoxy among the Russians and Americans alike. Did it have to be this way? Did the Sovietworld outlook and rnodus operundi amount to a prediction of detente’s collapse from the very beginning? Was detente a skillful Kremlin ploy to seduce naive Westerners into complacency? Or was it a willing self-deception on the part of the West, especially the United States, looking for a convenient excuse to withdraw from a rough game of geopolitical maneuvering for influence and resources? On the other hand, could it be that there existed an element of genuine Sovietcommitment to rapprochement with the United States, which, if exploited by American Dimitri Simes has, until recently, been affiliated with Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic Studies. As of May 1980, Dr. Simes has joined the faculty of the johns Hopkins School of Advanced lnternatwnal Studies. International Security I 4 diplomacy, could have had a beneficial spillover effect on other aspects of Moscow’s foreign policy? These propositions are not necessarily incompatible . Soviet-style detente could have been simultaneously a ploy to fool the West into a false sense of securityand a sincere effort to develop an acceptable arrangement with it. There are signs, as a matter of fact, that both elements were very much present in early Soviet reflections about the nature and prospects of dktente, reflections which were not sufficiently appreciated in all their complex and contradictory shape by the United States. In many cases, American analysis of Soviet foreign policy represented not just wishful thinking but an ethnocentric interpretation of Soviet words and deeds through the prism of America’s own perceptions and frustrations in the turbulent seventies. Dttente is Born The decision to make a new approach to the United States in the early 1970s was neither a sudden nor an easy choice for the Kremlin. It simultaneously reflected the new strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet Union. Soviet commentators understandably emphasized the former. According to Moscow ’s official line, the basis of detente was a ’change in the correlation of forces in the USSR’s favor. As self-serving as it is, this view definitely represents one element of the story. Without reaching rough parity in strategic weapons with the United States, the Soviet Union would have been reluctant to accept any deals from a position of perceived inferiority. More generally, the Kremlin would probably...