COULD 'STAR WARS' FOMENT A NEW RUSSIAN REVOLUTION?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88B00443R001604270033-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 5, 2010
• Sequence Number: 33
• Publication Date: January 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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E f.!',T[~'~ F `r-'~~' !E~ WASHINGTON POST
Ruian Revolution?
By Jerry F. Hough
N THE WEEKS leading up to tomorrow's meet-
ing in Geneva between Secretary of State
George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister -
Andrei Gromyko, we've heard a great deal about the
- competing factions in the administration in Washing-
ton. But what about the fictions in Moscow? Might
they be relevant to these arms control negotiations?
Many experts argue that it is all but impossible to
intelligently decipher the internal politics of the
Kremlin. But we really can make a plausible assess-
ment of the political debate in Moscow and its impor-
tance for the United States. -
' Two basic problems have bedeviled the analysis.of
Soviet politics in recent years. First, we have failed
to understand the driving forces and foreign policy
imperatives of economic reform - the central sub-
ject of debate or the Soviet political agenda. Second,
we have erred by characterizing the Soviet Union
foreign policy debate as "detente vs. anti-detente."
Instead there are at least three basically pro-detente
positions in Moscow; by failing to distinguish between
them, analysts have confused the alignments on Sovi-
et-American relations.
Today's Soviet Union is divided between more con-
servative leaders, usually of the older generation,
-who are afraid of change and - in many cases -
eager to make peace with the United States to avoid
internal reforms; and others, mostly younger men,
who are themselves divided on many foreign policy
issues, but united in their desire to remake the Soviet
economic system.
!ronically, current American policy, which obvi-
ously encourages Moscow's anti'American hard-
liners, also boosts the boldest reformers - men
whose political success could pose the gravest chal-
lenges to our interests. Perhaps the biggest single
stimulus to internal economic reform is President
Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense program,
which has confronted the Soviet leadership with a
nost painful reminder of its own failures to match
JVestern'technological might. If the elderly leaders
!ow in power cannot find a political solution to the
;tar Wars challenge, the younger generation seems
lestined to reject their policies for bold and adventur-
,us new experiments intended to make the Soviet
Jnion more innovative, and more competitive.
6 January 1985
0
~1d Sfiar F~lars' ~'orner~t a Mew
Understanding of the Soviet Union and its for-
eign policy must begin with one basic fact: the
Soviet Union and Japan began to industrialize
at the same time, both suffered grievously in World
War 11, but today, Japan can compete effectively -
too effectively - with the United States in the ex-
port of the' highest-technology products, while the
Soviet Union cannot even produce simple machinery
that can be sold in Eastern Europe and ' the Third
World. There is not the slightest. evidence that the
present economic system will ever be capable of solv-
ing this problem. The traditional Soviet pretense that
their system offered a model that other countries
would want to copy has, in the last 10 years, turned
to ashes_
Communist revolutions now occur only in
the most backward countries, and the Soviet
system is not even taken seriously in the
;politics of industrializing Third World coun-
tries like Taiwan, Indonesia, India, Egypt,
Argentina and Mexico. It is the Japanese
model that is influential, and the Soviet
Union looks as if it will fall behind not only
Europe and Japan, but also South Korea, Sin-
gapore and maybe, God forbid, China.
In an interview published in the military
newspaper Red Star last May 9, Marshal
Nikolai Ogarkov, then chief of the Soviet
general staff, went a step further. He hinted
strongly that the Soviet economy is not
capable of maintaining Soviet military equal-
ity with the West. Both in that interview and
in an article published in November (two
months after his unexpected removal from
his high post), Ogarkov.essentially said that
nuclear weapons are unusable. The number
of nuclear weapons is so great, he said, that
"you do not have to be a military man or a
scholar to understand that a further buildup
of them is becoming senseless." The fact
'that all these points were repeated either
verbatim or in stronger language in the
November article was a signal that he was
not removed for saying them - that the
leadership essentially agrees.
In the May 9 interview, Ogarkov implied
that conventional weapons or technological
breakthroughs would be decisive. He painted
the gloomiest picture of "the rapid changes
in the development of conventional means of
battle ... [which] sharply raise the fighting
capacity of conventional weapons, bringing
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th
t
th
l
l
em
eve
d
e
of wea
puns of mass ce-
stniction in their effectiveness" and "the
t4pid development of science of technology
[which] create the real preconditions for the
appearance in the near future of still more clear enough, how do reformers in Moscow
destructive kinds of weapons based on new sell a program that arouses workers' fears of
physical principles." He pointedly cited a higher prices and unemployment (fears that
statement by Friedrich Engels about the de- led to a Solidarity movement in Poland), the
pendence of the military upon the economy. managers' fear of foreign competition and
These statements were not reprinted in the the conservative fears of the subversive im-
November article, a clear sign of how Ogar- pact of foreign ideas in the Soviet Union and
kov got in trouble with Konstantin Chernen- Eastern Europe? In particular, how do they
ko, the current leader. do it when the United States is in a highly
If the Soviet population senses that the confrontational posture?
traditional communist system will doom the If the published Soviet debates of th e last
Soviet Union to a progressively inferior two years are any guide, the answer is clear.
world position and even threate
it
ilit
n
s m
ary
security, the stability of the Soviet system
will be in jeopardy. The Russian people are
not the inert mass often depicted in the
West; they conducted two of this century's
most drastic revolutions in 1905 and 1917.
They are fully capable of another.
f the driving force of economic reform
were simply the long lines in the stores
and the poor selection of consumer
goods and foods, reform would require diffi-
cult changes in social policy - a raising of
the prices of items like meat and bread, in-
centives for managers to economize on labor
and to fire inefficient workers, toleration of
riches for the innovative. But these would
not have major foreign policy implications.
But because the problem is technological-
backwardness, the foreign policy implica-
tions go much deeper. Leonid Brezhnev
seemed to think that importing Western
technology would solve Soviet difficulties,
but now Soviet economists understand that
the opposite solution is more appropriate.
Soviet managers will never produce goods of
world-level sophistication and quality unless
they are forced to meet foreign competition.
Soviet managers must be forced to export
technology, not simply import it, and to com-
pete with that which is imported:
The Soviet leaders now must move to-
wards integrating the Soviet Union into the
world economy in a way that China is begin-
ning - though only beginning - to do.
" But how is Soviet business going to com-
pete if Russians don't develop a feel for
Western society and tastes - and if Soviet
Central Asians don't develop such a feel for
the markets of the Middle East? How can
this be done without permitting greater con-
tact with Western (and Moslem) ideas? How
can the Soviet Union move towards much
more intimate contact with the world mar-
ket without permitting greater economic in-
gration of West Germany and East Germa- I of the 20th century by nuclear war" and
ny, of Western Europe and Eastern Europe? that military expenditures are needed more
of socialism, as never before, demands not
only the availability of the appropriate' de-
fense potential (economic, scientific-techni-
cal, spiritual and military), but also the capa-
bility to use them immediately."
The fact that Marshal Ogarkov went be-
yond this position to suggest the need for re-
form indicates that any simple-minded con-
servative position is politically weak. The in-
herent problem with the conservative ap-
proach is that military spending cannot solve
the technological problem. Unless the SS-25
now in development flies, the Soviet Union
still has not been able to develop an opera-
tional, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic
missile 20 years after the American Minute-
man (which is such a missile), and its lag in
computer technology puts it at greater dis-
advantage with other modern weapon tech-
nologies. Moreover, drastic cuts in consump-
tion to allow massive new military expend-
itures would be politically dangerous, espe-
cially if there is no accompanying reform
program that holds out the prospect of a bet-
ter life to ordinary citizens.
T
he other three positons are all pro-de-
under President Richard M. Nixon. And they
?- tente in one way or another, but they differ
sell it (not yet publicly, but in private coup- enormously. in their policy implications.
sels, according to my Soviet informants) The second position might be called the
with proposals for anti-American moves to traditional detente view. Like the conserva-
woo Western Europe and Japan - not aim-, tive first position, it is -based on a two-bloc _
ply with outmoded "peace" campaigns, but, image of the world, but those in this camp
with concrete gestures like returning to believe that detente between the two blocs
'Japan the four disputed islands Moscow
seized after W
ld W
II
i
or
ar
, or gran t
ng Japa- is possible. Advocates of traditional detente
nese the right to build Toyota plants in Sibe- emphasize the centrality of the Soviet-Amer-
na or permitting real West German-East , ican relationship. They insist on Soviet domi-
German rapprochement.
--
f Li--
t
but, t an
o
So the Soviet debates cannot be charac- appreciated in the United States,- they gen-
terized as simple pro-detente and anti-de- erally concede Europe and Japan to the U.S.
tente. The major positions in the debate are Despite their verbiage, the traditional pro-
much more complex than that, and even the detente faction generally likes the Western
following attempt to. lay out four positions alliances as* a means of keeping West Ger-
misses many. differences among people many and Japan non-nuclear, and of justify-
within each group. ing Soviet troops in East Europe.
-
Since the answers to these questions are than investment and reform: "The defense
They sell their reform ideas with anti-
Americanism. Like Marshal Ogarkov, they
talk about the relationship of Western tech-
nology to modern weapons and suggest that
military security demands reform. Like thel
new director of the major international rela-
tions institute IMEMO (Alexander Yakov-i
lev), the former editor of the government
newspaper Izvestia (Lev Tolkunov) and the
former ambassador to Germany (Valentin
Falin), they speak about a messianic, repul-!
sive American political culture with which it''
was always impossible to do business, even i
I The traditional detente position is held by
he first position is, in essence, anti-de- ', politburo members and their allies who are
tente. It is found in the military news- d
l
w
i
eep
y
orr
ed by economic reform and
~. paper Red Star and the conservative frightened by outside ideas. It is based on
journal International Affairs, and treats the the hope that- a- relaxation of Soviet-Amer.
W
_ Dmitri Volkogonov's that the United States
.has anactual "desire to 'replay' the lost bat-
est as united and threatening in its drive to
achieve military superiority. As in the case
of Caspar Weinberger's view, this position
does not usually seem associated with the
advocacy of military action, but focuses on
the need to increase military spending.
In essence this position tends to be anti-
reform, because its proponents tend to be
Xenophobic and isolationist in regard to the
West. It is expressed in assertions like Gen.
ican tensions would reduce the domestic
pressure for reform. Originally it was based
on the belief - now discredited - that im-
porting technology would be a. panacea. in
real political terms, the traditional detente
position, not the'anti-detente position, has
become the basic conservative stance. It is
the position taken by men such as Brezhne'?
Chernenko, Gromyko and Dmitri Ustinc-.
the defense minister who died last month.
The third position might be called activ
American-oriented detente. Its propor..-
think that the Soviet-American relation.
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be central, because only these coup- W. - 4P - .
f have the capability of destroying each Indeed, movement towards an anti-Amer-
. r. But unlike the traditional detente ad- ican detente remained strong after Andro- (which
tired ch goods of everyone k world knows requires peaks oc-
pov's death in Februa and through quality), he speaks out dedicated - . Con equently they oftencspe kcfer ry y and Jthe for the expansion of expenditures on light in-
early summer of 1984. Thus, Ma
can boycott of the descry in his election speech (but that pas-
.:itly of interrational cooperation, the inte- featured an anti Ameri
;.ration of the world economy and the build- Olympics, apparent encouragement of visits sage was excised from Pravda).
.rig of trust between the Soviet Union and to West Germany by East German and Bul- Domestically, the logic of his situation
the United States. garian leaders, signs of impending agricul- should certainly push him to reform. In for-
This is not just propaganda for the West, tural reform, Marshal Ogarkov's remarkable eign policy, Gorbachev as leader would have
but is a plea for a change in Soviet attitudes interview and subtle signs of a weakness in to opt for detente. But after an initial, broad
and policy as well. The traditional detente the position of Gromyko (a lower ranking "Peace" campaign, he'could easily choose
people tend to be reactive, but the activists than Ustinov in order of election speeches the pro-Japanese, pro-European (and anti-
think that American hostility might be and a subnormal celebration of his 75th American) version to help him sell his do-
broken down by far-reaching Soviet arms birthday in July). These were all part of a mestic reforms to skeptical comrades on the
control proposals, tension-reduction in the consistent package. central committee. But. much depends on
Third World and less Soviet secrecy. This In August and September, as Chernenko events and the timing of the succession. .
position seems to be represented by a num- recovered'his health after a bout of heart The foreign policy alignments and options
ber of professional Americanologists, inched- trouble, a number of these policies were re-' in the Soviet Union create innumerable pars-
ing scholars like Georgi Arbatov of the Insti- jetted in an apparent return to the tradi- Boxes for U.S. Policy and Soviet-American
tute of the USA and Canada and Fedor Bur- tional detente policy. Gromyko came to relations. American policy has had a devas-
latsky, once an aide to Yuri Andropov. Washington, and his speech at the United tating impact on the political standing of the
The fourth position is the anti-American, Nations evoked memories of the wartime al- activist, American-oriented detente position
pro-Europe, pro-Japan one. In'public, it is ex- ?Lance - one of the code-words of the which is most dedicated to a real improve-
pressed by extreme anti-American postions Americanists. The East German and Bulgar- ment in Soviet-American relations. When
and by strong emphasis on division within ian visits to West Germany were cancelled, the leaders have adopted the reassuring ges
the . West. For example, the director of j and the central committee plenum on agri- tures the activists propose - small reduc-
IMEMO, Yakovlev, has written of a "rela- culture did nothing. Ogarkov was removed,' tions in Soviet troop strength in Central Eu-
tive leveling in the strength of the three cen- and Gromyko's stock soared. In October, rope or the renunciation of the first use of
ters of power: the USA, Western Europe, three months late, his birthday was suddenly nuclear weapons, for example - the United ?
arid Japan," and he argued that "in the his- celebrated with unprecedented fanfare, sec- States has acted as if they were signs of
torically foreseeable future the centrifugal and only to Brezhnev's himself. weakness. and has become more confronta-
tendency in the capitalist world will grow." . he near-term future is hard to predict. tional. Yet,' precisely the confrontational
He signaled his attitude towards reform by In sociological terms the Politburo is aspects of American policy have been the
stating that Japan is in first place in many . deeply divided. Six of the 11 voting biggest stimulus in building support for sig-
technola ies, has become "a world economic
"the members are over 70. They average 74 ve old guard has resisted that the conserva-
state" has e years of age, and, if the Kazakhstan party President Reagan's Star Wars program
symbol of youth and dynamism in the West- leader is excluded, they have each worked
em world." for an average of over 30 years in high posts seems to have terrified the conservative old
In private, many of the proponents of anti- in Moscow. The other five members average guard.
and Groms ko sure] t are a keosiher-
American detente can be contemptuous of 60 years of age, and have each worked in y y pa-
what they see as Soviet government's half- Moscow for an average of three years; Gor- thetically eager for an agreement that would
hearted efforts to woo Europe and Japan, bachev with six years work in Moscow is the create the impression that American tech-
and they have more substantial actions in old-timer. To think that these outsiders nology is being controlled. But in placing
mind. This group, however, consists of agree with what has been done for 30 years space at the center of their disarmament
proponents of economic reform who are not stretches credulity. policy - or perhaps being forced to empha-
merely thinking geopolitically of a dissolution Gorbachev has an enormous range of re- size it by their pro-reform opponents - they
of the Western bloc or the altering the loyal-' sponsibilities - coordination of the econ- have ensured that the Soviet press is filled
ties ("Finlandization") of West Europe, but omy, ideological work, foreign communists, with articles about the American threat in
are contemplating a greater integration of agriculture, the food industry and, by all indi- space. These articles implicitly and repeat-
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe into cations, still personnel selection. He is given edly remind Soviet readers of American
Europe and Asia as a whole,.with conse- assignments like his trip to Britain to test technological superiority, and thus of the
quences for both blocs. - him, to broaden his experience and to build need for reform and new leadership if no
It i;yet. tl.et e.,,,_,...,... ' him un on Soviet tpIPV;c;nn- ~.,.1 do 1- k,?e_ agreement i's reached.
w , p o-E ymg colors. If in reuospect, it is clear that American
as attracted to this anti-American r r u- passing these tests with fl' colo
rope and pro -Japan detente, conception. there are forces strong enough to challenge policy of the late 70s and early '80s broke
There were men with varying views in An- :. him for the succession, it is virtually incon- the postwar mold of Soviet-American rela-
dropov's entourage. The careers of those ceivable that they would not be strong lions ancald c sht a the stage eon a international r bstantial and
like Arbatov and Burltasky, adherents of the enought at least to give Romanov or some- But because United d State se r s deter-
activist, pro-American detente view, did not _ one else these kinds of experiences. - ecause the States seems deter-
while Andropov was general secre- ~ ` --- '. mined to force the Soviet Union to play to prosper rut a An ro and Ygeneral were Gorbachev s policy positions cannot be Europe and Japan, any change will represent
pinned down. He has been playing a cautious . a real challenge to which the U.S. will have
promoted. When, on Sept. 23, 1983, Andro- Gary Hart role, signalling in various ways a to react with
pov made his famous statement about the great sopill areac
commitment to new ideas, but not being spe- For example, how will we we react if Japan is
impossibility of dealing with America, he al- cific. He escorts the Hungarian leader given the'four disputed islands back and gets
most surely was not rejecting detente in around, he chairs a very unusual Supreme ' real access to the Soviet market in exchange
gone ra positio. , bun was moving towards a pro-Eu- Soviet Foreign Affairs Commission session for a more evenhanded role in superpower
on expansion of trade with the Third World I relations? If change of this kind occurs quick-
;- ` ly, the Reagan administration may wistfully j
Jerry Hough is professor of political science at Duke wish that it had let sleeping dogs he a bit I
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