GORBACHEV'S POLICY TOWARD THE UNITED STATES, 1986-88

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09T00367R000200340001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 15, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 1, 1986
• Content Type: SNIE

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Special National Intelligence Estimate
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Gorbachev's Policy Toward
the United States, 1986-88
Key Judgments
22 SEP 198t
714'
et
SNIE 1I-9-86W
September 1986
Copy 08
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THIS ESTIMATE IS ISSUED BY THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE.
THE NATIONAL FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE BOARD CONCURS,
EXCEPT AS NOTED IN THE TEXT.
The following intelligence organizations participated in the preparation of the
Estimate:
The Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security
Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the intelligence organizations of the
Departments of State, the Treasury, and Energy.
Also Participating:
The Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army
The Director of Naval Intelligence, Department of the Navy
The Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Department of the Air Force
The Director of Intelligence, Headquarters, Marine Corps
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SNIE 11-9-86W
GORBACHEV'S POLICY TOWARD
THE UNITED STATES, 1986-88
KEY JUDGMENTS
The full text of this Estimate
is being published separately
with regular distribution.
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SCOPE NOTE
This Special National Intelligence Estimate assesses the policies of
the Gorbachev regime toward the United States during the period 1986
through 1988, the remaining term of the current US administration.
This Estimate was stimulated in part by interest in the degree to which
Soviet domestic economic conditions encourage accommodation with
the United? States on key security issues. The Estimate discusses
Gorbachev's broader foreign policy aims primarily as they affect US-
Soviet relations and does not attempt an exhaustive analysis of Soviet
foreign policy in all areas.
Section II summarizes our assessment of current Soviet economic,
military, and overall foreign policies and their prospects, Gorbachev's
internal political position, and the bearing of these factors on Soviet
policy toward the United States in the next two years. Section III gives
our assessment of current Soviet policy toward the United States and the
calculations shaping it. Section IV presents conclusions and the outlook
for the next two years.
The discussion in Section IV rests largely on the assumption that US
policies and positions with respect to arms control and regional security
issues remain substantially constant. We have not attempted compre-
hensively to hypothesize the impact of alternative US policies.
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KEY JUDGMENTS
The Gorbachev regime aims to re-create some sort of detente
relationship with the United States to ease the burden of arms
competition and, accordingly, the task of domestic economic revival.
Because the detente they seek reduces US challenges to Soviet interests,
Soviet leaders believe such a relationship can help preserve and advance
the USSR's international influence and its relative military power.
Gorbachev seeks to relax East-West hostility for a protracted period?
he is looking ahead through the 1990s?not to suspend the competition
but to put the USSR in an improved long-term position as a globally in-
fluential superpower.
These aims have persuaded the Soviets to pursue an active,
engaged policy toward the United States. It is focused on arms control
(supported by a vigorous worldwide propaganda offensive) and on the
prospect of US-Soviet summits (exploited for leverage to moderate US
policies and encourage concessions on arms control). The Soviets strive
to deflect- the Reagan administration away from security policies that,
despite some moderation in the last two years, the Soviets see as severely
challenging to them and to discourage such hostile US policies from
being carried forward into the next US administration.
The Soviets realize, however, that their engaged policy toward the
United States risks legitimizing hostile policies of the current adminis-
tration by muting Western anxieties about them and seeming to show
that they are a sound basis for dealing with Moscow. Managing this risk
is a delicate problem for the new Soviet leadership. There are differing
points of view in Moscow about how to craft a diplomacy sufficiently
forthcoming to encourage US concessions while minimizing this risk.
Despite such controversies, we believe Gorbachev has the political
strength to forge Politburo consensus behind the initiatives and decisions
he favors in dealing with the United States.
The central Soviet objective in bilateral dealings with the United
States and in the surrounding Soviet diplomacy and propaganda toward
US Allies and Western publics is revival of the arms control framework
of the 1970s or creation of a similar successor system. The Soviets see
such a framework as serving their political, military, and economic
interests. It would provide an important element of predictability that
would ease the balancing of military requirements and economic
revitalization in the 1990s. And, should its political side effects include a
flagging of overall US defense efforts such as occurred in the mid-1970s,
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so much the better. Gorbachev is more prepared than his predecessors
to consider substantial reductions of offensive nuclear forces in such a
framework for reasons that include cost avoidance, increasing interest in
enhancing the quality of Soviet nonnuclear forces, and a desire to
undermine the credibility of US nuclear strategies. The main Soviet
motive for considering and negotiating about large nuclear force
reductions at present is to undermine the US strategic defense initiative
(SDI).
To be acceptable to the Soviets, a comprehensive strategic arms
control framework that includes substantial reductions of offensive
nuclear forces must provide effective constraints on the US SDI,
through formal agreement that limits the program and political effects
that they calculate would kill it eventually. Despite its uncertain future,
the Soviets are deeply concerned about SDI because it might produce a
military and technological revolution and could undermine the war-
fighting strategies of Soviet nuclear forces. In the extreme, the Soviets
genuinely fear that SDI could give the US confidence it had a damage-
limiting first-strike capability. To be in a position to counter SDI, the
Soviets believe they must preserve large ballistic missile forces and the
option to expand them. For both economic and military reasons, they
wish to avoid the costs of a competition to develop and counter
advanced ballistic missile defenses in which the United States has the
technological initiative. Their campaign against SDI aims to deny the
United States that initiative; but they will proceed to develop advanced
defense technologies in any event, as they did following the ABM
Treaty of 1972.
Despite the seriousness of Soviet economic difficulties and the
longer term importance to Moscow of easing East-West tensions to help
address them, we believe that these difficulties do not place Gorbachev
under so much pressure that he must make fundamental concessions to
the United States on major security issues during the next two years.
Gorbachev believes he can hold out for an arms control framework and
a larger US-Soviet security relationship generally on his terms, while
putting political pressures on Washington to make key concessions,
particularly on SDI.'
Gorbachev believes that only a diplomacy appearing flexible to
American and European audiences, especially on arms control, can put
pressure on Washington and test the possibilities that may exist for real
US concessions. More innovations in Soviet arms control positions of the
sort Gorbachev has already introduced are likely if he believes they can
' The Director, Defense Intelligence Agency holds that the opening clause of this paragraph
overstates the role of Soviet economic conditions in causing the Soviets to pursue detente in any time
frame, and that strategic and political considerations are overriding. See paragraph 4 of -Discussion- for
a fuller statement of this view.
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help him achieve constraints on SDI and other US defense programs.
New unilateral gestures, such as modest cuts in military manpower or in
the officially stated defense budget, are possible.
At the same time, Gorbachev sees himself able to defend Soviet
interests in the Third World, particularly with regard to embattled
Marxist-Leninist client states. He expects a more active Soviet foreign
policy overall to open up new opportunities in the Third World and
among US Allies.
Soviet policy toward the United States involves two principal tactics:
first, holding open the promise of nuclear force reductions if the United
States accommodates on SDI; second, holding open the prospect of a
series of additional summits if the United States gives ground on arms
control. If the United States makes the concessions necessary for this
process to proceed, Gorbachev believes that it will serve the political
goals of weakening anti-Soviet policies in Washington or encouraging
more congenial behavior from the next US administration. Gorbachev
sees the popularity of arms control in the United States and Europe and
domestic disquiet over the administration's foreign and defense policies
as his main source of influence over Washington and Washington's
eagerness for summits as his principal point of tactical leverage.
To maximize his leverage, Gorbachev will delay his decision on
scheduling another summit as long as possible. All things being equal,
Gorbachev would profit politically from additional summits. But we
believe he will hold out for terms that advance Soviet political and
strategic interests; he does not need a summit for its own sake. Some US
movement on SDI, particularly acceptance of the principle that control
of space-based strategic defenses should be dealt with by reaffirming
the ABM Treaty and modifying its withdrawal clause, plus US delay in
actually breaching the SALT limits and convergence on another arms
control issue, such as nuclear testing or INF, would be enough to bring
Gorbachev to another summit. We are simply uncertain whether
Gorbachev will come short of these conditions.
Meeting these conditions and holding another US-Soviet summit
would not, however, produce Soviet agreement to a comprehensive
arms control package on nuclear force reductions. For such an agree-
ment, we believe the Soviets will demand codification in some form of
the principle that offensive strategic force reductions must go hand in
hand with tight constraints on SDI. By the same token, we believe the
Soviets will strongly resist principles and agreement terms that seem to
license SDI by reconciling its development and deployment with
nuclear force reductions.
Failing agreement along Soviet-preferred lines or publicly visible
progress toward it, we believe that Gorbachev is likely at some point to
shift his priorities and tactics toward a more concerted effort to
discredit the policies of the current US administration, to inject East-
West issues into the 1988 Presidential election, and to encourage more
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flexibility from the next US administration. Such a shift would involve
harsher propaganda attacks on the administration and the President and
stand-pat negotiating tactics, although not a Soviet withdrawal from
arms control negotiations or other fundamental changes of behavior.
Moscow would continue to position itself to appear the party eager for
improved US-Soviet relations, while trying even harder to portray the
administration as the recalcitrant side. There is some basis for arguing
that this shift has already taken place, but we think this is unlikely and
would look for it sometime in late 1987 or early 1988.
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