-6-

by events subsequent to Peter; namely the extension of Russian domination over Poland meant that Russia became locked into an alliance with both Prussia and Austria—especially after they became co-conspirators in the demise of Poland. Russia thus lost a certain freedom of action, and the periodic attempts to regain it led to clashes in the near east.

In addition, the weakening of Sweden, Poland, and Turkey meant the weakening of France's eastern barrier against the Hapsburgs. France, however, did not substitute Russia, but continued for a long period to support the Poles and Turks against Russia. The new Russian state (formally recognized as an Empire by the other European powers during the 18th century) thus was deprived of a strategic option, alliance with France, and was less able to a balance of power game. Indeed, the balance of power was often defined against Russia, rather than with it.

After Peter I, Russia had to interpret its interests in terms of the European complex, and not simply in terms of its traditional territorial conflicts with its neighbors. In the decades that followed Peter, prior to Catherine the Great, there were numerous twists and turns, largely reflecting the predelictions of the rulers (Catherine, Peter's wife; Anne, his niece; Elizabeth, his second daughter, and her son, Peter II). There was in particular a struggle over the Prussian orientation. In general, Russian foreign policy, as it emerged under Andrei Ostermann rested on a close alliance with Austria, and hostility toward France. There were three wars, almost a repetition of the previous century. Wars that caused a Russian intervention against Poland, to restore Moscow's candidate to the throne, marking the appearance of Russian soliders in Germany (the war of the Polish Succession). Wars against the Turks, in which the Crimea (Azov) was partially recovered (1735-39); a war with Sweden (1741-42) and finally the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War. Russia joined the coalition forged by the Austrian minister Kaunitz, and fought against Frederick the Great. In this period there was a brief flirtation with France, but both Ostermann and Bestushev (foreign minister after 1741) favored the Austrian alliance against Prussia, and its temporary ally France. A brief effort was made by Bestushev, the virtual foreign minister, to develop an alliance with England in 1747. Within a decade, however, Russia had shifted completely and concluded a secret alliance with France, against England and Prussia.

During the Seven Years War Russian troops invaded East Prussia in 1757. The Empress Elizabeth saw the war as a chance to eliminate Prussia as a power, but her death brought the young Tsar Peter III to the throne, he was a great admirer of Frederick; Russia left the Kaunitz coalition, and was soon fighting along side Frederick, thus opening the way to a

-7-

Prussian victory, and the emergence of Prussia as the next
European great Power. The overthrow of Peter III by his wife
Catherine the Great ended Russian intervention.

Again in this period Russian military forces distinguished
themselves to the point that the British twice sought alliances
to call on Russian soldiers. In 1747 the British agreed to pay
for the stationing of 30,000 Russian soldiers in Courland; and
for an agreement to send an army of another 30,000 to the Rhine
in the event of a French advance in the Netherlands. Russia's
threat as a military power was growing and becoming a factor to
be taken into account in European politics.

Catherine took power in the name of opposition to her
husband's pro-Prussian policy. And there was a strong debate
among her advisors over whether to turn to Prussia or Austria.
One school argued for alliance with Austria combined with Great
Britian; another argued for Austria and France. But Catherine
was intrigued by Frederick (and she was of course German). Her
policy soon reverted to the more traditional lines, of
balancing between Austria and Prussia; she needed Austrian
support against Turkey and Prussian acquiescence in Poland -- a
line of policy that had had been broken by Elizabeth and Peter
III. Catherine preferred no truly fixed alliance. She pursued
a highly opportunistic policy but with considerable success.
She immediately withdrew Russian troops that were fighting with
the Prussians, and abandoned Peter's proposed alliance with
Frederick; but she did not reenter the war on Austria's side.
As a result Russia was excluded from the peace negotiations--an
indication that Russia was not yet in the front rank..

The priority for Catherine was her southern boundary. For
this operation against Turkey she needed Austrian support. In
another of the seemingly endless wars between Russia and
Turkey, Moscow finally prevailed by invading the principalities
and a Russian fleet appeared for the first time in the
Mediterranean. The war was finally settled by the treaty of
Kuchuk Kainardzhi (1774), Russia gained greater access to the
Black Sea on the Dnieper, but gave up the principalities
( Moldavia and Wallachia) as a result of Austrian pressure, and
Prussia encouraged (while retaining the right of
intervention on behalf of Greek Orthodox). An interesting
foresahdowing of things to come, Austrian resistance in the
eastern question.

An equally important aim for Catherine was to reimpose
Russian power in Poland, by placing her own candidate on the
throne. For this she needed foreign support, and had to turn
toward Prussia and Frederick. His interests conicided, because
at the end of the Seven Years War Prussia risked isolation.
France could no longer be counted on and England was
disenchanted with its brief alliance with Frederick. Austria
was totally hostile to Prussia because of its losses in
Galicia. This left Russia. And thus was made the basic

-8-

bargain that led to the first partition, and eventually to the demise of Poland. (Catherine cynically commented, "Why don't we help ourselves?")

Before the end of her reign Catherine was involved in a second Turkish war, partly the result of her encouragement of subversion of Turkish rule in the principalities taking advantage of the ambiguities in the treaty of 1774. Meanwhile, relations with Prussia cooled, and relations with Austria improved; Catherine alienated Britain by forming the League of Armed Neutrality during the American revolution. Potemkin (famous ever after for his villages constructed along the route of Catherine's visit to the Crimea), was given a free hand against the Turks. This time Austria was an ally (1788). During this war, the Swedes tried to regain their losses in a minor war against Russia, in which the Swedes failed, despite temporary Russian weaknesses in the north because of the Turkish war. Neither Potemkin, nor the Austrians, however, were militarily successful, at least not at first. The famous General Suvorov was finally called in and he began to prevail. Russian success again produced a reaction: Prussia and England reached an alliance, and Pitt sought cabinet support for outright intervention in 1791; he was defeated, not supported in the cabinet and England and Prussia withdrew their support from Turkey.

The Turks were exhausted, and had to stop, and this let Catherine return to the Polish problem. While Russia was preoccupied with Turkey, the Poles had developed a refrom program and were calling for Russian withdrawal. Prussia took the side of the Polish nationalists at Russian expense. A liberal constitution was proclaimed in May 1791, and this proved to be the last straw. The Russians intervened, inviting the final partition. Russian reaction was profoundly influenced by the fact of the French revolution. Catherine detested it. It is ironic that with the final partition of Poland, Russia had achieved most of its original territorial objectives, but then confronted a new era dominated by ideology, nationalism, and revolution.

Russia, the most powerful conservative power, was about to enter the age of the French revolution. While Catherine could live with the French revolution for a time, she could not abide an independent and liberal Poland. But the end of the Polish state did not end the problem for Russia. It haunted Catherine's successors. It was a revolutionary act -- to demolish a national state--performed by three conservative states. Alexander I, Catherine's grandson, spent much of his career trying to atone for Catherine's actions. And more than a century later Nicholas II's foreign minister, Sazonov, concluded that the devouring of Poland had been Russia's fatal mistake. A friendly alliance between Slavs was a far stronger alternative. But perhaps it is characteristic of Russian policy

-9-

that for all the moral anguish of Catherine's successors, in
one way or another each tenaciously held on to her gains, and
in 1945 Stalin reclaimed most of them.

After Catherine, however, Russia could not act in foreign
affairs without considering the consequences of her actions on
her conspirators, Austria and Prussia, the one an invereate
enemy of the French revolution, and the other an opportunistic
exploiter.

The era of Peter and Catherine ended with Russia deeply involved in the foreign politics of Europe, including the near east, which was primarily a European question. Russia brought no particular tradition to European politics. It had little experience compared to the major continental powers. Indeed, it has no special theories about Russian foreign policy, other than the exigencies created by geopolitics. It was thus always vulnerable to a crude pragmatism, as well as to more sentimental approaches, especially about Russia's holy mission. Where Britian and France could test a policy against obvious national interests, whether on the Rhine or at the Scheldt, Russia had no clear criteria. Even its territorial expansion was more hapharzd than it seemed. Yet one fact has to be impressive at the beginning of the new century: Russia's success were largley the result of military power, and accomplished with little outside assistance. Russia had not prospered because of its skills or clever insights into European politics, or even very inspired statesmanship, but because of its increasing power.

Finally, Russia enjoyed far greater immunity in its domestic policies, than England and France, where popular opinion and democratic institutions were beginnnig to make an impact. The domestic social problem for Russia was the increasing rigidity of its class structure. But this had no particular impact on foreign policy. Indeed, foreign policy was the preserve of the Tsar, and his select ministers. Even the nobility concerned it self less with foreign policy than domestic problems.

A French historian B. Nolde, summed up the relationship:

"The range of foreign policy was extraordinarily wide: abstract and idealistic schemes without any foundation in immediate national interests could guide the actions of statesmen as much as precise, selfish and even commonplace political calculations...In light of this fundamental factor of modern Russian history, one may say that the Russian state constituted more a political than a national unity, the Empire being, so to say, no more than a vast abstraction of a multitude of national realities. No strictly national policy imposed itself in an absolute manner, the greatest variations in the diplomatic program were permitted."

-10-

Commenting on this the American historian Richard Pipes
added:

"foreign policy and domestic politics in Russia were widely separated from each other. The government conducted foreign policy with little regard for the realities of domestic politics, while Russian society was so deeply involved in domestic problems that it paid almost no attention to foreign affairs except at times when foreign failures weakened the government and compelled it to grant concessions at home."

In any case, Russian foreign policy was more or less locked into a pattern: alliances with Austria and Prussia, and a preoccupation with Central Europe and the near East, until after the late 1880s, when there was a reversal of alliances and Russia joined France and England against her former allies, and added to its foreign policy agenda the Far East and the Balkans.

## EUROPE 1800 - 1856

Catherine's son was Paul I; he was half mad and pursued a foreign policy that confirmed his instability. He concluded an alliance with Turkey, went to war against Napoleon and incurred the hostility of England. He briefly joined a coalition against Napoleoen, then deserted it, turned against England, and revived his mother's League of Armed Neutrality. It was this erratic and dangerous foreign policy that contributed to his assassination.

His son Alexander I was also something of an enigma. Napoleon once said that there was "something missing" in Alexander's character. Little wonder given his youth, torn between the spartan military life at his father's barracks at Gatchina, and the enlightened French style court of his grandmother, Catherine. He was educated by a Swiss philosopher, La Harpe, but also drawn to the adventure of the military parade. To help him learn the military drills, he enlisted one of Russia's greatest reactionaries, Arakcheev. The result was a schziophrenia, a combination of martinetism and liberlism, yet both subordinate to the firm belief in the autocracy.

In foreign affairs he was influenced by an assortment of well eductated European oriented liberals, chiefly Adam Czartoryski, Alexander Novosiltsev and his cousin Paul Stroganov. Czartoryski convinced Alexander, for example, that he should restore Polish independence through the creation of a separate kingdom, with the Czar as king. Novosiltsev exclaimed in 1801, upon hearing of Alexander's accession that "now we will have constitution". Alexander was a liberal reformer of sorts (almost all Czars were), but the reforms were imposed from above, and were largely designed to restore some

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of Catherine's measures.

The new Czar was soon drawn into the maneuvers of the British to revive the coalition against the French. In these negotiations Alexander dispatched Novosiltsev to London to negotiate the terms of the alliance with Pitt. The programs of the two sides make an interesting contrast. Alexander's emissary outlined an idealistic structure that included arbitration, collective security and a league of nations. "Everywhere public institutions should be founded on the sacred rights of humanity," was the theme.

Pitt had radically different ideas. He wanted to limit the French and to do so by creating a circle of smaller states as buffers. To this end he foresaw a general European alliance with Russia and England as guarantors of a settlement. The negotiations reached no conclusion, but the alliance was created. Alexander was not so idealistic when it came to practical politics: though espousing liberal constitutionalism, he agreed that Holland ought to be a buffer against France and that the King of Sardinia ought to be restored to his throne. It was even suggested to Pitt that should Turkey join France, and both be defeated, then England and Russia would partition to the Ottoman empire. The latent conflict between the practical power politics of the English and the abstract ideas of Alexander was not tested until 1813, when Castlereagh revived Pitt's general plan.

The new coalition, minus Prussia at first, suffered one disaster after another. The Austrians were defeated at Ulm, the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz: the Prussians, then rashly joined the war only to be demolished at Jena, and finally the Russians were smashed at Friedland. Austria was humiliated, and the Prussian king was left with virtually no land. The defeat of the Russian army, however, was not decisive. There was still the possibility of continuing the war in the interior of Russia. Napoleon wisely preferred to negotiate, and even to conciliate Russia at Tilsit. The Duchy of Warsaw was created at Prussian expense, Finland went to Russia, as well as parts of Prussian Poland. The Tsar signed a secret agreement to consider joint actions if England refused to make peace.

Alexander had tried a policy of keeping a free hand in 1804; then he tried containment and finally an alliance, which was also destined to fail. In the end he had no recourse but the classic Russian one, of fighting the enemy deep in Russia, as Peter had done. And of course he succeeded.

Alexander's attitude at Tilsit was realistic, however. He consoled Frederick William: "Be patient; we will get it all back. He will break his neck." Realistically he wrote his mother in 1808:

-12-

"France must believe that her political interests can
allied with those of Russia. Once she ceases to believe this
she will see in Russia nothing but an enemy to be dsetroyed.
We must gain time and prepare ourselves. "

Alexander and Russia were learning the European game.
Alliances, expediency, buying time, territorial acquisitions,
even at the expense of old friends and allies.

Nor were there any illusions on the part of Napoleon, when
in 1812 he told his Marshals, "I come to finish off once and
for all the colossus of Northern Barbarism," and, a day later,
proclaimed to his troops; "The Second Polish war will terminate
the fatal influence which Russia had exercised in Europe for
fifty years."

He was wrong, but as Russian troops approached their
border, to continue their pursuit of Napoleon, the Czar was so
concerned that Kutuzov's forces would halt that he went to the
front to take command. He had good reason for his suspicion.
There was in fact a debate whether Russia should move west into
Prussia or be content with Napoleon's defeat in Russia.
Kutuzov argued for stopping but Alexander decided to invade and
the Prussians rallied.

The Tsar needed both Austria and Prussia to defeat Napoleon
and this meant raising the Polish question. The Tsar made a
strategic mistake, however, in continuing the war, without
having first resolved his objectives (Metternich hesitated
until he was satisfied that his aims would be protected). The
contrast with Metternich could not be greater, if compared to
Alexander's proclamation upon entering Prussia in April 1813,
"We stand for faith against atheism, for freedom against
despotism, for humanity against barbarism."

Under this banner, Alexander pursued Napoleon to the end;
while others wished to stop in 1814, the Tsar carried the day
and insisted on further pursuit. The price was the Quadruple
Alliance, signed at Chaumont. In this period and through the
Congress of Vienna, the Czar had a polyglot of advisers:
Czartorysky, a Pole; Nesselrode, son of a Russian-German
diplomat but educated in Germany; Capo d'istria, from Corfu;
Stein, the Prussian; and Pozzo di Borgo, a Corsican. Little
wonder that he began to develop dreams of a new Europe -- the
Holy Alliance, inspired by another foreigner, Baroness von
Kreudener. His theme of the Alliance was summed up in his
instruction to diplomats, May 1815:

"All policies shall have to consist in examining and
consulting the moral situation of peoples, to determine
their institutions and relations between states that

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Reference?

Wien?

1/18

Papu
7/19/19

form the great European family."

Later at the Congress of Verona, after Vienna, he said, "There can be no question of British, French, Russian, Prussian, Austrian policies, there is no longer any but a general policy."

For Russia, Poland was the central issue at Vienna. The Czar wanted to take over the Duchy of Warsaw, thus pushing Russia well into Central Europe, and to compensate Prussia on the Rhine. Metternich wanted to limit Prussia in Germany and to limit the Russian advance as well. The British also wanted to block the Russians; Castlereagh called on the French, inviting Talleyrand into the big four negotiations. This did not dissuade Alexander. Metternich found a more expedient device, and by maneuvering on the question of compensation for Prussia in Saxony forced Alexander to bargain over Poland, thus admitting the right of powers to determine the outcome. In this sense, Alexander bowed to the principle of legitimacy, so that his Polish gains were not imposed but resulted from an overall adjustment and settlement. Alexander's ambitions were the first casualty of the new system.

This compromise enabled the Congress of Vienna to conclude. Alexander had by then reverted to mysticism and was to insist on the Holy Alliance. Metternich dismissed it in his memoirs as a "philanthropic adventure," but it suited his interests to placate the Tsar. And Prussia, having barely survived as a state, in 1806, was more than eager to support the new status quo. Thus came into being an alliance of the three northern courts, much as Catherine had envisaged, bound together by the terms of the settlement in Central Europe.

In the process of transforming the Quadruple Alliance into a league of conservative monarchs, the British deserted and reverted to the traditional role of holding the balance. Nevertheless, the Vienna system survived at least until 1870, and some would argue until 1914.

In this period certain characteristics of Russian diplomacy emerged or were confirmed. The near obsession with physical security based on extending Russian boundaries as far forward as possible -- in the Baltic, Finland, in Central Europe, and against Turkey was strongly reiterated. This created a lack of sensitivity over the principle of equilibrium. For the Tsar, the negotiations over Poland had little to do with finding Castlereagh's balance or Metternich's legitimacy. There was also a tenacity in Russian diplomacy: the obsession with the straits, for example, was never far from Russian demands even at the expense of the European balance. Finally, there was an obvious impact of the personal style of autocrat.

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For the next 70 years Russia was well served by its diplomats, but the decisive policies were those of the Czar. Moreover, the Czar's choices were often affected by the views of palace cliques and internal intrigues. For the most part the Czars were capable and interested in foreign policy--until Nicholas II. And on the whole they pursued consistent geopolitical objectives and Russian persistence paid off. On the three occasions when Russia lashed out--in the Crimea 1856, in the Near East 1878, and in the Far East war with Japan--it suffered defeats. Gradually these reduced the power and prestige that Alexander had accumulated by 1815. The net result was that after 1905 the fear of revolution at home, and failure abroad, drove Russian policy to look for foreign success, especially in the Balkans. Further defeats were courted (in the Bosnian crisis) until in 1914 Russia was ready for war against her traditional allies of the Eastern courts--an ironic reversal from 1815.

A major factor in Russian stability to 1856 was Karl Nesselrode, who reigned as foreign minister for almost 40 years. His father was in the Russian diplomatic, but Nesselrode was educated in Frankfurt and Berlin and he too entered the Russian diplomatic service. He rose to foreign minister in 1816. His orientation was strongly European: at several critical junctures his advice, cast in terms of the larger European interests, convinced the Czar of a policy of restraint. Thus he argued against Russian intervention in Paris in 1830 at the time of Louis Phillipe. It was at this point that Metternich wrote to Nesselrode that 1830 was the "beginning of the end of old Europe," to which Nesselrode replied, "old Europe had not existed for forty years". At the same time, Nesselrode followed his predecessors and successors in arguing against an independent Poland, which he characterized as an outpost for England. Nevertheless, Nesselrode, in the mid-1830s and 1840s, explored a British orientation for Russia and was temporarily successful.

Nesselrode was certainly no liberal even by European standards of the time. He wrote that "socialism, communism, the disordering passion for democratic institutions, the insane idea of reconstituting public law on imaginary principles of race, language, and nationality" [were] "dangerous heresies", and against the unity and harmony of the natural order. As ideological justifications for war and revolution, they pitted "radical extremes" against "moderation," a word that in his vocabulary denoted both restraint in the exercise of power and the *juste milieu*. The word "moderation" was frequently used in connection with Russian alternatives to a policy of aggression. Alexander I's support for the European system was attributed to his philosophy of "moderation." Under Nicholas I, Nesselrode was identified as the mainstay of the "party of moderation." The contrasting view was that Russian professions of "moderation" were confessions of weakness. "History shows

-15-

that Russian moderation is nothing but a matter of
opportunity." (J.M. Chopin, _Russie_ (Paris, 1838), vol. 2:621).

Russians who were discontented with Alexander's decision to
pursue Napoleon and liberate Europe were overshadowed by the
excitement of the allied campaign, the victory, and the
Congress of Vienna. When it was over, Russia was committed to
a foreign policy they disliked. the conservation of European
order, justified by the same rationale that had been employed
against Kutuzov--that Russia's interests united her with the
rest of Europe. As a defender of the new policy, Nesselrode
was compelled to oppose both revolutionary change in Europe
generally and the national movement in Russia.

The personal views of Alexander I and his extensive
involvement in diplomacy made Russia's support for the European
system fairly secure in the first decade after 1815. Alexander
was painfully aware that the European system was unpopular with
his own people. In 1825 he told a French emissary, la
Ferronays, that while he had "kept the general welfare
constantly and solely in view" in the effort "to maintain the
peace of Europe," he had been pressured to do otherwise. There
were those who wanted Russia to adopt an independent policy,
particularly in the Eastern Question, and if his reign came to
an end they might prevail. Shortly before Alexander died in
December 1825, the possibility of a major revision of foreign
policy was raised.

The following is based on a description of the situation drawn
from a biography of Nesselrode:

The new ruler, Nicholas I, did not fully understand his
brother's policy or share his ideals, and was more receptive to
nationalistic influence. Nesselrode's opponents, led by
General A.A. Arakcheev, urged Nicholas to get rid of him. But
Nesselrode, at forty-five, held advantages of experience and
established position. And he remained, directing the
intervention in Poland, and against Egyptian forays against the
Sultan, gaining a Turkish agreement to close the straits
against foreign belligerents.

The Czar visited England in 1844, and pronounced Turkey to
be the "sick man of Europe". But Palmerston proved to be the
nemesis of Nesselrode's Eastern policy; when he returned to
power as foreign minister in a liberal coalition of 1846.
Palmerston had been outmaneuvered by Nesselrode in 1833 when
Russia signed a secret treaty with Turkey (Unkar Skellessi).
Palmerston was determined to even the score and block Russian
ambitions in the Near East. He was described by Nesselrode:
"He (Palmerston) wants to force us to back down, and will
torment us plenty to achieve his aim." But Russia's principal
problem was not Britain; it was the revolution of 1848.
Consistent with his belief in the European concert, Nesselrode
in 1848 observed, "If the people's passions were ever allowed

-16-

to influence the calculation of high politics it would be
enough to turn all of Europe upside-down." And it was this
principle that informed the Russian intervention in Hungary in
1849.

Nesselrode was disoriented after 1848. "Everything is so
uncertain that it is impossible to form an opinion about what
we should plan even for the nearest future," he complained.
But he tried to follow the old principles, for example in the
role of arbiter at the Olmuetz Conference in 1850. He had
always regarded German unity as advantageous to Russian
intercourse with the West. This was a strange assumption, but
with Metternich gone there was little chance of strengthening
the concert by cooperation with Austria. When Britain took
independent action in Greece in 1850, all Nesselrode could do
was cite precedent illustrating Russia's "common interests and
actions with the British Cabinet," and warn solemnly against
the destruction of "relations between the powers which have
signed the same agreements and have been linked for many years
by a common solidarity." But he knew that there was little
reason for Britain to support the concert when she could assert
her influence advantageously through what Nesselrode described
as the "Entente Cordiale of baneful memory, so dangerous and so
great a peril to the peace of Europe." Nesselrode dreaded it:
"A war with England, where there was talk of the coming of a
great war, a struggle between Western democracy and Asiatic
despotism. "A war with England would be the worst of all
possible wars," he said. "She is beyond our reach and we are
the ones who would pay the price. May it be God's will to
protect us from it!"

## THE CRIMEA

A turning point had been reached in 1848-49. Metternich's
departure symbolized the erosion of his system. Nesselrode
commented that there were "few examples of a year so disastrous
and rich in ruin." For a dedicated proponent of the system
Nesselrode found himself at sea : "Everything is so uncertain
that it is impossible to form an opinion what we should plan
even for the nearest future." Similarly in Russia Pan-Slav
sentiment was rising.

The great advocate of panSlavism, Nikolai Danilievsky,
wrote some time later:

"Constantiople had been the aim of the aspirations of the
Russian people from the dawn of our statehood, the ideal of our
enlightment; the glory, splendor and greatness of our ancestors
the center of Orthodoxy and the bone of contention between
Europe and ourselves. What historial significance
Constantinople would have for us if we could wrest her away
from the Turks regardless of Europe."

-17-

Nesselrode recognized this trend, and its implications for an objective foreign policy: he commented to one of his ambassadors,

"There is one fact which cannot be set aside, cannot be guarded against and cannot in any way be entrusted to diplomacy. This fact is the sympathy and community of interest binding our population of fifty million Orthodox with the twelve million comprising the majority under the Sultan (in European Turkey)."

Nesselrode saw Europe marching steadily toward the brink of war. In December 1852 he instructed the Russian ambassador in England to warn Aberdeen, now Prime Minister, that France was reopening the Eastern Question, entertaining "imperialist ideas" and pursuing an "ambitious and aggressive policy...to the woe of Europe." In January 1853 he sent a remarkable dispatch to this same ambassador, Brunnow, "an hypothesis pure and simple," in which he explained that Russia alone could not be expected to preserve peace if France forced a confrontation: "Even if we are conciliatory in our language and our actions, it is to be feared that sooner or later we will fail to avoid war." Russia would be confronted with a crisis in which it would have two choices--to back down and withdraw her influence in the Near East, or fight, with equally detrimental effect. In a war, "carried on in the name of the independence and integrity of the Porte." Russia would "face the whole world alone and without allies, because Prussia will be of no account and indifferent to the question, and Austria will be more or less neutral if not favorable to the Porte."

Nesselrode foresaw that it would be a limited war, for the specific purpose of destroying Russian naval and maritime power in the Black Sea. "The theater being distant, other than soldiers to be employed as a landing force, it will require mainly ships to open the straits of Constantinople to us, and the united naval forces of Turkey, England, and France will make quick work of the Russian fleet" and "destroy Russian commerce, burn their bases." In the end, "the endeavor of 1815 will be annihilated." His hypothesis proved quite accurate, from first to last.

In the Crimean crisis, Nesselrode argued against a strategy of taking the offense against the Straits; it would result, he said, in a war of all Europe against Russia. The war and the humiliating Peace of Paris marked the end of Nesselrode, and, in a sense, the end of a phase of Russian policy. The Russian nationalists were in full cry: there was "no alternative but to forge the power with which to turn power aside." In the years to come Nesselrode was to be blamed for the "false system, the inept and anti-national system" (of Alexander the First);--"a profound deviation in Russian historical life."

-18-

Even Nicholas looked back on the Crimean war with regret, "so many lives sacrificed for nothing." But, at the time, a new nationalism was evident in Gorchakov's policy, as he succeeded Nesselrode as foreign minister, extolling the virtues of Russian power, not Russian diplomacy: "Nesselrode forgot that it was in the era of (Alexander I's) victories that Russia and Europe stood together in an entirely amicable frame of mind; whereas in 1854 everyone and everything conspired against Russia." Gorchakov advocated spurning European entanglements in order to gain time to gain strength: "They reproach Russia telling her to isolate herself and be silent. Russia must stand aside. Russia will not stand aside. Russia gathers her strength."

There was also a new feeling that Russia had to concentrate on domestic policies. Even Nesselrode in retirement thought this would be the case: after the Treaty of Paris "the Russian minister of foreign affairs will have absolutely nothing to do. He advised Nicholas that,

"Russia should adopt a different foreign policy...it is clear from the present day Russia must accept the absolute necessity of international affairs and the development of her moral strength. Because this domestic work is the country's first need, all foreign relations that would impede it must be carefully avoided." (February 1856)

A.J. P. Taylor comments that the Crimean war was, then, a turning point. "Once the Eastern Question was raised, the Holy Alliance ceased to exist. Russian inaction in the Balkans was the Austrian price for the Alliance. But the Crimean war probably had to be fought to prove to the Czar that the Holy Alliance was no more. And nothing took its place; for Russia the result was a period of anarchy until the next round of struggle in the Near East. (1878)"

The Crimean war also shattered the myth and the reality of Russian power. After 1856, Russia carried less weight in European affairs than at any time since 1721. It meant that Western Europe was free to decide its own future without fear of Russian intervention. Some modern observers, however, interpret the Crimean war in terms of a poorly-conceived effort to contain Russia in the name of a doubtful expansionism.

The unanswered question was whether the Crimea, which revealed hard realities and of shattered illusions, was a consequence of Nesselrode's European policy or a consequence of its failure. His nationalistic opponents saw Sevastopol as a direct result of a policy a foredoomed to failure. His recommendation in 1856 that Alexander II adopt a new foreign policy was taken as an admission that he had been wrong all along, and implicitly as a call for a "true Russian program, oriented to Russian society, placing Russia first and depending on native Russian understanding of her urgent needs and

-19-

requirements." Nesselrode believed that the Crimea was an
accident: the revolutions and war in 1848-1856 were related
that allowed an inherent instability to come to the surface.

The difference was evident in his defense of his policy
against an attack by a Slavophile who accused him of having
betrayed Russia's national interests. Nesselrode's replied
interesting for the criteria that he sets forth for judging
policy:

"One cannot always surmount all obstacles with equal ease
by taking one course as opposed to another. The questions you
must ask are these: Was it generally effective? Did it help to
preserve Russia's domestic tranquility? Did it enhance
Russia's importance and moral influence in foreign affairs?

Nesselrode then continues to make a plea for subordinating
Russian interests to the broader European interests, a good
statement of his position:

"Surely no one would argue with the view that from 1815 to
1848 Russia's influence was acknowledged to be great, and that
under the guidance of her rulers Russia held a leading position
in Europe. But this position required sacrifices from
Russia--moderation and relentless magnanimity. It required
that she sacrifice her ambitions, even her private ambitions,
so that the high interest of her policy would not be
subordinated to lesser considerations...."

One of Nesselrode's biographers sums up:

"The decline of the classic approach was indicated by the demise of the congress and concert systems by mid-century; but more than this, it involved a conscious rejection of a mode of perceiving alternatives and whole guiding philosophy. Within Nesselrode's frame of reference, the "old conservatism" was nowhere in evidence after 1856. Not in Russia; not in Britain, where the Peelite Tory approach with its free-trade philosophy had been eclipsed by an imperialistic disregard for the commonweal in both parties; not in France, the victim of vanity and aggressive impulses under another Napoleon; not in Germany, which verged on madness in his opinion. The modern school, in which war was accepted as an instrument of diplomacy, not as the most palpable evidence of its failure, was strange and repugnant to him. (Nesselrode) met Bismarck and found him no less pompous and narrow-minded than Gorchakov. Bismarck sized up Nesselrode as "one of those diplomats of the chancellery and salon we don't encounter anymore, fortunately"; and Nesselrode, displaying his curious gift for the incisive comment, remarked, "Certainly the good God did not create him to solve the German question."

From 1815 until the end of the Crimean war, Russian policy
in Europe was a source of general stability. The Czars
defended Catherine's gains, despite Alexander I's ambivalence

-20-

toward a Polish state. The innate conservatism of the Czars in domestci policies reinforced their geopolitical inclination toward Prussia and Austria. And this alliance, bound together by the co-conspiracy against Poland was further strengthened by the Czar's notion of a Holy Alliance and Metternich's realpolitik.

The problem for Russian policy was created by the fact that it had strong geopolitical interests outside of Central Europe. The Near Eastern question eventually brought Russia into an almost permanent conflict with England, dating back to the late 1790s, under Pitt; and this antagonism was further aggravated by British public opinion, which deeply resented Russia as an autocracy, and as the repressor of Poland. Finally, as the champion of the status quo, conservatively interpreted, Russia was in conflict with France. And these two antagonisms, with France and England, combined to defeat Russian policy in the Near East, because Austrain concerns in the Balkans, made Vienna an uncertain ally when it came to the decline of Turkey. Thus Austrian threats proved decisive in the Crimean war, causing the Russians to capitulate.

In the wake of the war, Gorchakov toyed with a turn to France, splitting the Crimean coalition, and a revival of the "natural alliance" with Austria; but a new Polish crisis in 1863 served to revive the Crimean coalition against Russia; in this crisis, however, Prussia remained neutral (thus earning Russian gratitude that Bismarck would put to good use in 1970).

Shortly before the Franco-Prussian war, Gorchakov offered an alliance to Bismarck in which Russia would advance 100,000 troops toward Austria if France attacked Prussia; in return Prussia would keep Austria quiet. Bismarck refused and ridiculed the proposal by countering with an offer to keep France quiet in a Russo-Austrian crisis.

Gorchakov had tried entente with France, and failed; and an alliance with Prussia, which also failed. What he wanted was a free hand in the Near East. Thus he was prepared to accept a Prussian victory in 1870, or even a French victory as long as it was not in all alliance with Austria. After the Prussian victory, Gorchakov, cynically invoking the European concert, said that, "It is impossible that the other great powers be excluded from the future negotiations for peace, even if they do not take part in the war."

But Russia had abdicated, in fact, its interests in Europe in order to win a cheap victory in the Near East. During the Franco-Prussian war, Gorchakov opportunistically denounced the Treaty of Paris restrictions against building Russian warships in the Black Sea. (Bismarck encouraged him to do it.) Eventually, however, this forced an international conference in London: Russia won the right to build its warships but conceded

-21-

in principle the contention that international settkements
could not be changed without the consent of the powers (this
was to prove devastating in 1879, when the Russians were forced
to submit the treaty of San Stefano to the other Powers).

In any case, in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war,
Bismarck included Russia in his new system based on the League
of the Three Emperors. This appealed to the tradition of
Catherine and the Holy Alliance. But it put Bismarck in
command, a fact that was to prove decisive in the next Near
Eastern crisis. Moreover, the operation of Bismarck's system
strained Russian policy. In the war scare of 1875 Gorchakov
defended France in the name of the European balance, earning
himself the enmity of the Iron Chancellor, who paid him back at
the Congress of Berlin.

? Danel
1/20

That Congress was a second strategic defeat for Russia. To
understand Russia's strateguc situation before the crisis of
1878, it is necessary to diverge and examine the long contest
in central Asia between Russian expanison and British
resistance.

CENTRAL ASIA.

Russian failure in the Far East was offset by a series of
successes in Central Asia, or the "Middle East" as Iran and
Afghanistan were called in the 19th century. Russian forces,
political and military, reached Persia early in the 1800s, and
in a series of wars and maneuvers, Russia came to dominate
northern Persia; the current boundary being set as early as
1828. This alarmed the British, who feared a Russian advance
to the Gulf. And the Russians did eventually appear as far
south as a consulate established in Bandar Abbas and even
sought a coaling station in Djibouti. This probing in the Gulf
was motivated by a vague strategic objective of outflanking the
Turks, but it was never pursued much beyond consolidating the
Shah as a Soviet client.

The official Tsarist interpretation of Russia's Central
Asiatic policy was clearly set forth in a remarkable dispatch
of Gorchakov, to Russian representatives abroad, December 3,
1864:

"The position of Russia in Central Asia is that of all
civilized States which are brought into contact with half
savage, nomad populations, possessing no fixed social
organization.

"In such cases it always happens that the more civilized
State is forced, in the interests of the security of its
frontier and its commercial relations, to exercise a certain
ascendency over those whom their turbulent and unsettled

-22-

character makes most undesirable neighbours.

"First there are raids and acts of pillage to put down. To put a stop to them, the tribes on the frontier have to be reduced to a state of more or less perfect submission.... Once reconciled, these tribes in turn must be protected against those "half savages" who have not yet been subdued, placing the civilized state in a dilemma: it must either abandon all attempts at civilization, or "plunge deeper and deeper into barbarous countries..."

"Such has been the fate of every country which has found itself in a similar position. The United States in America, France in Algeria, Holland in her Colonies, England in India--all have been irresistibly forced, less by ambition than by imperious necessity, into this onward (movement) where the greatest difficulty is to know where to stop."

In response to repeated British complaints and concerns over Russian intentions Gorchakov pretended not to understand them: Had not Russia already proclaimed its pacific intentions? As for Persia, Gorchakov told the British ambassador,

His Excellency (Gorchakov) said that he could not understand the connection between Central Asia and the Persian Monarchy which had induced this declaration.... he must say that he never suspected Her Majesty's Government of any intention of encroaching upon the territory of the Shah.

In May 1866, Russian troops moved against Bukhara. When asked about the proposed limits of Russia's advance, Gorchakov replied that only the military were competent to decide such a question and that it was absurd to suppose that Russia's moves could threaten the safety of India.

The pattern was now established. Year after year Russian troops would penetrate deeper into the heart of Asia. A flurry of alarm would run from Calcutta, or Simla, to Whitehall. The British ambassador in St. Petersburg would call on Russia's minister of foreign affair, ask for an explanation, receive assurances of the Czar's determination not to annex an inch of land anywhere, send a dispatch to that effect to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and leave the matter there until Russia's next move reopened the whole issue.

When the Czar's army occupied Samarkand in May 1868, the British ambassador Buchanan was persuaded by Gorchakov "that the Russian Government not only did not wish, but that they deeply regretted, the occupation of that city, and he was assured that it would not be permanently retained ..." (It was, of course).

-23-

In an attempt to reach a modus vivendi in Asia, the British government repeatedly tried to establish a buffer zone between Russia and India. During the personal negotiations with Gorchakov in September 1869, at Heidelberg, Lord Clarendon suggested the upper Oxus as a possible demarcation line, thus making a neutral zone out of Bukhara. Gorchakov countered by proposing that Afghanistan be made into a buffer state. These negotiation failed, as did several other British attempts to stop Russia's advance through the use of diplomacy.

In 1869 Russia occupied Qizil-Su (Krasnovodsk), which was obviously the first step in the direction of Khiva, the next object of Russian expansion. The expedition against Khiva was worked out in St. Petersburg at a Crown Council, presided over by the Emperor.

Whereas in 1863, the Russians were 500 miles from the Oxus, after occupying Bokhara, they were on the Afghan border; it became incumbent on the British to negotiate a buffer arrangement; which the Russians accpeted in principle, but violated in practice. During the summers of 1871 and 1872, while extensive preparations were being made for an attack, Gorchakov's diplomats kept insisting that no move against Khiva was being contemplated. In the spring of 1873, an army of 13,000 men with 62 guns, under General Kaufmann's command, was ready to march. Among the officers who waited impatiently for the excitement of any expedition against the "savages" were such illustrious personages as the Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich and the Duke Eugene of Leuchtenberg.

But only a few months earlier the influential count P. Shuvalov, the Czar's aide-de-camp, had gone to London where he "reassured" Lord Granville, then Foreign Secretary, that,

"Not only was it far from the intention of the Emperor to take possession of Khiva, but positive orders had been prepared to prevent it, and directions given that conditions imposed should be such as could not in any way lead to a prolonged occupation of Khiva. Count Schouvalov repeated the surprise which the Emperor, entertaining such sentiments, felt at the uneasiness..."

The initial Russian advances were to the east, into Turkestan, capturing eventually the three khanates of Bokhara, Khiva, and Kokand, which brought Russia to the Afghan and Chinese borders, by 1873. It was typical of the period that when Khiva fell in 1873 the British ambassador warned that "Russia would menace the independence of Persia and Afghanistan and thereby become a standing danger to our Indian empire."

When the barrage of British complains and protests became

-24-

too intensive to be stopped by just another assurance, as was
the case in the spring of 1875 in connection with the
forthcoming occupation of Kokand, Gorchakov reminded the
British that Russia was free to act as it chose:

“The Cabinet of London appears to derive, from the fact of
our having on several occasions spontaneously and amicably
communicated to them our views with respect to Central Asia,
and particularly our firm resolve not to pursue a policy of
conquest or annexation, a conviction that we have contracted
definite engagements toward them in regard to this matter.”

Moreover, Gorchakov wrote, the British have taken it upon
themselves to "restrain our action" and "paralyze our
influence." According to Gorchakov, the British view was
wrong. "It has always been understood that either party retain
entire liberty of action and judgment with respect to measures
necessitated for its own security." Russia had made it clear
since 1864 that it had no expansionist intentions "beyond the
limits of strict necessity," and that Britain, with its Indian
experience, knew full well what such necessities might be. In
Gorchakov's opinion the "understanding" between Britain and
Russia was limited to recognition by both parties that it was
in their interest to maintain peace in Central Asia, that for
this purpose it was desirable to preserve between them a
neutral zone, and that Afghanistan should constitute such a
zone.

Lest the British be provoked by the firm tone of this
communication, Gorchakov appended to it a note which reaffirmed
that

"His Imperial Majesty has no intention of extending the frontiers of Russia such as they exist at present in Central Asia, either on the side of Bokhara, or on the side of Krasnovodsk and of the Attrek. we have no inducement to do so. On the contrary, the Emperor deems any extension of our frontiers in those parts as being opposed to our interests."

In conclusion Gorchakov stated that the Emperor had given
formal orders to the military authorites to confine themselves
to the protection of Russian frontiers and commerce.

The exchange of notes had not yet ended when Russian forces
launched their final attack on Kokand. On September 3, 1875,
the khan was defeated by General Kaufmann, and in another five
months the latter's successor, General Kolpakovski, issued the
following Imperial proclamation:

"We, Alexander II, etc., yielding to the wishes of the
Khokandi people to become Russian subjects, and likewise

-25-

recognizing the absolute impossibility of restoring the Khanate to peace and tranquility by any other means, commanded that the Khanate of Khokand be immediately incorporated with our dominion...."

So much for Russian assurances.
Russian limits were never defined and Russian power steadily expanded the Russians backed away when a British force marched on Kabul in 1878-79; but as this crisis subsided the advance resumed, reaching the town of Merv in 1886, which the Russians annexed, thus causing another crisis with Britain even Gladstone was outraged, because he had just been assured by Giers that the Russians had no such intentions; by 1888 Russia influence had reached Herat in Afghanistan itself but again the British forced a retreat.

As late as 1903, the British ambassador wrote complaining to London about the dispatch of Russian agents into Afghanistan: "Russia has notified her intention of sending, when she pleases her agents into Afghanistan. When the right is exercised she will then attempt in Afghanistan the policy pursued with suchh success towards Turkey, Persia, China and Corea: that is, while respecting and defending their formal indpendence, to acquire a predominant influence in the councils of the Government."

Finally, it must be noted that one of the most severe confrontations came when the British were engaged in the Sudan; indeed, it was the Russian threat that caused London to call off its expedition to retaliate for Khartoum. Such pressures led eventually to an accommodation, but in the interim it forced the British into an even stronger anti-Russian front, which made itself felt at the Congress of Berlin.

## THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR and THE CONGRESS OF BELRIN

In 1877 Russia went to war with Turkey, largely because of national pride and ethnic solidarity (or pan-Slavism). Russia had no particular war aims. Indeed, it offered to settle on moderate terms in the prewar negotiations with the Great Powers.

At the outset, Gorchakov said that in the Near East there were two alternatives: First, a "complete reconstruction and second, a mere replastering, which would keep matters together for another ten years." No one could possibly wish for a complete settlement--everyone must wish to put off as long as possible." Before the war, Austria and Russia agreed that in the event of a Turkish defeat, they would partition the empire into smaller successor states. And the Russian appetite would

-26-

grow for a restructuring, partly because the original conflict
between Serbia and Turkey, and partly because a new issue the
expansion of Bulgaria was introduced.

Rumania agreed to permit the passage of Russian troops to
attack the Turks, in return for a promise to protect Rumanian
integrity, which had already been violated in the agreement
with Austria (Russia was to get southern Bessarabia, one of the
few gains it did achieve).

Gorchakov's position was set forth in a very complicated
memorandum.

--"As to Suez and Egypt, we shall not touch these two
points: we have neither the interest, the desire, nor the means
to do so."

-- As to Constantinople, Russia can only give assurances as to
permanent annexation: a pledge against temporary occupation
would, if it became known, only encourage the Turks in their
obstinacy." But "once the British Ministers are fully assured
that we shall in no case remain at Constantinople, it depends
on them to save us from the need of going near to it," by
exerting due pressure at the Porte.

--As to the Straits, the existing regulations ought to be
"revised in a spirit of equity" and "by common agreement".

As regards British fears of Russian action on the Euphrates
and the Persian Gulf or at Erzerum, and its effects on the
route to India, Gorchakov continues with a major statement of
policy:

"our position is simple and clear. We have no interest to
injure England in this direction, [i.e., in the Persian Gulf]
but we may be forced to seek measures of defence against her
hostility. Our attitude depends entirely upon hers. It is
natural that Persia should be roused by events in her
neighbourhood and should try to profit by them at Turkey's
expense....As matters stand, we have tried to moderate the
Shah's aspirations towards an official and definite alliance
with us...but we could not altogether rebut him, if only
because we should have risked throwing him, *par dépit*, into the
arms of the very active British Legation...We are quite
disposed to come to terms frankly and loyally on all these
questions with the London Cabinet: we believe such an entente
to be possible and more advantageous than mutual distrust and
suspicion.

But Gorchakov adds a vieled threat :

"In general, we have no interest in troubling England in
her Indian possessions nor in her communications. The present
war does not demand this, for its aim is clearly defined and it
would only be complicated by so vast an extension of the

-27-

struggle. You can give categorical assurances on this point.
But we must reserve our absolute right to defend ourselves by
every means against English hostility, so long as we have not
the certitude of being able to avoid it."

Gorchakov then turns to consider "the essential aim of the
war", and justifies Russian unilatera action:

"The English", he says, "find it hard to understand a war
of religious and national sentiment, and being incapable of one
themselves, they consequently look for arrières pensees. But
they should at least be accessible to the material side of the
question and recognise that Our August Master can no longer
tolerate a state of affairs which may at any moment affect the
peaceful development of Russia and precipitate her in her own
despite into disastrous crises and wars. This situation must
cease or be improved so far as possible."

"For two years we have sought this improvement in an
European agreement. Sad experience has abundantly proved that
what has upset the Concert of the Powers is the lack of
guarantees and material sanction. They have drawn up
programmes of the reforms to be imposed upon the Porte without
effective means of coercion or control. They should, on the
contrary, have left to the Porte the initiative of
improvements, but imposed on it the control of Europe and the
material sanction of her power."

Finally, having threatened the British Gorchakov explains
why he wishes to conciliate them:

"To-day we (i.e. Russia) have to fulfill this double task.
It is a question of finding the limits within which it can be
reconciled with British interests or scruples. We do not
regard this as impossible. What is absolutely necessary for us
is to put an end to permanent crises in the East--on the one
hand by asserting our military superiority in such a way that
the Turks should not in future be tempted to defy us lightly,
on the other by putting the Christians, above all of Bulgaria,
in a situation effectually guaranteed against the
incorrigible abuses of the Turkish administration. What England
needs is the maintenance in principle of the Ottoman Empire and
the inviolability of Constantinople and the straits. These
views are not irreconcilable."

The point of this is to illustrate the confused state of
Russian diplomacy: Gorchakov wanted his gains in the near east,
but he wanted the British to grant them without having to barg-
ain. The British saw it in much more cold-blooded terms.
Consider the sentiment of Queen Victoria: by March 1877 she
was denouncing to Disraeli, "this mawkish sentimentality for
people who hardly deserve the name of real Christians...and

-28-

forgetting the great interests of this great country." Her
dislike of Russia and of Gladstone blended, and she argued that
we could never allow the Russians to occupy Constantinople:

"To let it be thought that we shall never fight and that
England will submit to Egypt being under Russia" (once more
this curious assumption that Constantinople is the key to
Egypt) "would be to abdicate the position of Great Britain as
one of the Great Powers..."

There follows R.W Seton Watson's description of the British
position:

'Disraeli had no fixed principles or scruples in the
Eastern Question; to him it was simply and solely a
"Machtfrage"--in the fullest sense of the German phrase--from
which to extract a maximum of profit for England.

'Salisbury was of the opinion that "the Turkish breakwater"
was "now shattered beyond repair", that "any return to the
position of 1856" could only lead to the "dissolution of the
whole Empire, followed by endless anarchy", the main problem
for the Turk was "how to keep his Asiatic empire together", for
"sooner or later the greater part of his European empire must
go", and "Bosnia and Bulgaria were as good as gone".

"He was too ready to accept the Balkans as Turkey's
northern frontier, and to concede Kars to Russia. But if Batum
also was to be Russian, he told the Queen, "we must occupy some
island or station on the coast of Asia Minor, which will
neutralise the presence of Russia in Armenia".

After some initial Turkish resistance, the Russian army
advanced toward the Straits, and the British responded by
sending the fleet into the Sea of Mamora. The Russians
stopped, but imposed a draconian peace on Turkey, mainly by
creating a large Bulgaria. The Powers insisted on a Congress.
At first Gorchakov was eager, foreseeing a diplomatic triumph.
But at the Congress he failed: he had almost ceased to reckon
with the British and the Germans.

Bismarck emerged as the honest broker, against his better
judgment. But Disraeli was the clear winner, having obtained
Cyprus as compensation for the Russian acquisition of the
Turkish provinces of Kars and Batum. Bulgaria was cut down to
size, leaving Austria an open channel to Salonika. Russia was
the clear loser, even though its gains were greater than its
own proposal of 1877. William Langer commented: "Russia had
never since the time of Catherine the Great suffered so
terrible a diplomatic setback." Russia had been deluded by the
prospect of German support and Austrian weakness but had made
the mistake of ignoring the British. Russia had gone to war

-29-

for pan-Slavism, but it was Austria that had advanced in Bosnia. Many years later the new Czar, Alexander III, commented: "Our mistake is that we went with the peoples, not the governments. An Emperor of Russia ought always to go only with the governments."

The Congress demonstrated the new balance of power, with Germany at its center. According to A.J.P. Taylor, the Congress of Berlin ushered in a new era that none of the powers expected to last, and they would have been astonished to learn that it lasted for thirty-eight years. They would have been more astonished to learn that at the next great European assembly forty years later, the three northern courts would have vanished.

The Russians blamed Bismarck (and Gorchakov). Nevertheless, there followed a renewed system of alliances that brought the three northern courts together, at least for a time. But Russian attention was beginning to shift to Central Asia and the Far East. Alexander III succeeded in 1881; his wife was Danish, and he had no particular liking for the Germans. And when the reinsurance treaty was not renewed it was accepted with a surprising equanimity in St. Petersburg. Already there were some stirrings in the direction of France. And this was engineered by the last of the three major foreign ministers, Nikolai Giers, who succeeded Gorchakov after Berlin. Nesselrode, Gorchakov and Giers spanned almost eighty years; they were followed by a series of far less competent ministers and an increasingly irresponsible foreign policy, under Nicholas II.

By 1890 Russia was virtually isolated in Europe, and for the first time facing important challenges in the Far East. An alliance with France suggested itself, as a counterweight to both Germany (in Europe) and England (in the Near East). The basis for the alliance was a straightforward military arrangement, which in fact preceded the political alliance. France needed to count on instant Russian mobilization, which might deter Germany and lessen the weight of a German attack. Russia, on the other hand, wanted to be able to strike the first blow against Austria, not Germany, and this ambiguity was never entirely resolved. This military dimension was dangerous; only rarely had Russia committed its military forces in advance. Since France had only one front against Germany and was the principal revisionist power, Russia's decision was to prove fatal. At the time, however, it cleared the way for a more active Far Eastern adventure.

## THE FAR EAST.

Russian expansion into the Far East and in Central Asia are often cited as examples of an inherent expansionism of the

-30-

Russian and Soviet state. But they were two quite different
processes, with different results for foreign policy.

The expansion into the Far East was relatively effortless
and painless. It was not part of any concentrated policy, and
had no particular national aims other than commerce. It was
advanced importantly by free booters and independent actors
(e.g. Muraviev) in defiance of the Court or in an interpretation
of the Czar's presumed ambitions.

For all of the 18th century and most of the 19th century,
Russia found itself alone in the Far East; it was the first
European power to reach Japan and the first to conclude an
agreement with the Chinese. This expansion, largely by a few
settlers, brought no conflict with European powers. And even
the sporadic conflicts with China were not major ones. The
Chinese politely pointed out that they were not treating the
Russians as an enemy; not a tributary. In return for Russian
assistance against warring Turkmen and other tribes, the
Chinese conceded huge areas of territory to Russia, beginning
with the treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 (written in Latin). This
was the first of the "unequal treaties" (Aigun in 1858; Peking
1860) that the Chinese communists held against Khrushchev; in
fact they were not extorted under much pressure and most
conceded no part of the dynastic lands of the Chinese
emperors. Indeed, Russian policy until the end of the 19th
century was paternalistic toward China, even to the point of
occasionally advocating an "open door".

The real conflict came with Japan. As the other European
powers began to partition China, Japan joined, and in a war
with China, 1894-95, proved victorious to the surprise of
Europe. The Europeans decided to intervene to block Japanese
gains, and this aroused Russian interests in Manchuria, where
it wanted to extend a branch of the trans-Siberian railroad:
the cornerstone of which had been laid by Nicholas II, when he
was the Tsarevich in 1891; this proved to be a factor in
interesting the Czar in the Far East. In any case, Japan was
to be deprived of an enclave on the Liaotung Peninsula, while
retaining Formosa and retaining its position in Korea. The
disintegration of China alarmed St. Petersburg and Russia
floated a loan to pay Chinese reparations. An alliance was
concluded with China, conceding Russian use of Chinese ports.
The situation for Russia was complicated by the Anglo-Japanese
alliance signed on 30th January 1902: If either power were
involved in war with a third Power in defense of its interests
in the Far East, the other would remain neutral, but if any
further Power should join in hostilities against it, the ally
would come to its assistance. Neither Power would enter into
arrangements with a third Power to the prejudice of its ally's
Far Eastern interests without consulting its ally. In short,
Japan was able to face Russia with the knowledge that she would
be protected from any further attack.

-31-

In St. Petersburg opinions were divided. Count Witte was
only the Minister of Finance, but he was the architect of a
peaceful penetration of Manchuria: He believed that this would
bring China under Russian domination in the end. Lamsdorff,
the foreign minister, shared Witte's view of the Far East, and
wished to avoid any entanglements which would limit Russia's
freedom of action in Europe, to pursue a more active policy in
the Balkans.

The War Minister, General Kuropatkin, also wished an active
policy in Europe, and regretted Far Eastern commitments as
distracting Russia from her historic tasks in the region of the
Straits and in defence of the Slavs. But he differed from that
of Witte and Lamsdorff. He wished to annex northern Manchuria
in order to shorten Russia's eastern frontier and so reduce her
military commitments. He considered this an urgent task as he
feared the long-term effects of the rapid colonization of
Manchuria by immigrants from the over-populated provinces of
China. He believed that agreement could be reached with Japan
if north Manchuria became a Russian sphere, south Korea a
Japanese sphere, and south Manchuria and northern Korea were
neutral zones.

In response to the Anglo-Japanese alliance, France and
Russia in March 1902 declared that if "aggressive action" by
third Powers threatened their own interests, the two allied
governments would consider means to safeguard them. This meant
that the Franco-Russian alliance remained confined to Europe.

Lamsdorff proposed to the German government a similar
common declaration, but von Bulow refused. He urged the Czar
not to yield Korea to Japanese control: "It is evident to every
unbiased mind that Korea must and will be Russian."

In July 1903 the Japanese government proposed a negotiation
to The essence of the Japanese view was that Japan should have
a dominant interest in Korea and Russia in the Manchurian
railway system. The Korean railways should be linked with
those of southern Manchuria. Each Power should guarantee
trading rights to the other in the zone which it controlled.
Japan should have the exclusive right to advise the Korean
government on reforms. All previous Russo-Japanese agreements
about Korea should be superseded.

Shortly after, in August Witte was dismissed from the
Ministry of Finance. This marked the victory of Plheve, who
believed that Russia needed "a little victorious war to stop
the revolutionary tide". In October the Russians replied,
demanding a free hand in Manchuria but not granting the same to
Japan in Korea. All Korean territory north of the 39 degree
parallel was to be a neutral zone. Japan was to recognise that
Manchuria and its coast-line were outside the Japanese sphere

-32-

of interest. The Japanese rejected the Korean neutral zone and insisted that Japan had to have rights in Korea equal to those of Russia in Manchuria.

Japan now made thorough military preparations. but the Russians were far from ready. As late as January 15, 1904 Kuropatkin urged at a conference of ministers that war be postponed for sixteen months until the section of the trans-Siberian line around Lake Baikal be completed. In any case, he insisted that four months' delay was essential in order to allow reinforcements to reach the theater of war. But though not prepared for war, the Russian government would not yield.

Despite the defeat of the Japanese navy, Russian nationalist opinion at this time regarded Britain as Russia's main enemy. The Japanese were felt to be mere pawns of the British. There was even loose talk of an attack on India to wipe out the shame of the defeats in the Far East, and to crush the true villain. The Czar himself was, as so often, inconsistent. In conversation with the British ambassador he was courteous and even friendly. In his correspondence with William II he spoke sharply of British impudence. In his own diary he referred to the British as "our mangy enemies".

Witte returned as the chief Russian delegate to the peace talks where he showed great skill. He made no attempt to preserve Russian influence in Korea or southern Manchuria, but he refused any limitation of Russia's right to keep naval forces in Far eastern waters; rejected the claim for an indemnity on the ground that Russia had suffered reverses but not been beaten; and insisted that Sakhalin, which was a part of the Russian Empire, must remain Russian.

In the end a compromise was reached about Sakhalin; the island was divided between the two Powers by a west-east line. In the treaty of September 1905, the lease of Liaotung peninsula, with Dairen and Port Arthur, and the concession for the South Manchurian Railway south of Changchun, were transferred from Russia to Japan. Russian influence in northern Manchuria, however, remained as before. The conditions of the Chinese Eastern Railway concession remained as under the Russo-Chinese treaty of 1896. Japanese rights in Korea were recognized, and it was in fact understood that that country would be a Japanese protectorate.

Thus the first stage of Russia's expansion into China had ended in a defeat which was also the first considerable victory of an Asiatic people over white men since the Middle Ages. But Russia still possessed not only the basic resources but also the essential strategic positions from which once more to take up the challenge.

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Britain, having emerged from its splendid isolation, and fearing the growth of German power, had allied with Japan before the war with Russia, but during the conflict it remained neutral, once the incident of the Dogger Bank was cleared away. Even before the Russo-Japnaese war, Britain had begun to explore the possibility of a settlement with Russia in Central Asia. The final settlement was not reached, however, until 1907. These agreements gave northern Iran to Russian influence and southern Iran to the British sphere, with a central corridor of neutrality. Britain thereby blocked Russia from the Afghan border and from the Gulf Afghanistan was formally neutralized as a buffer state, with the Russians renouncing their direct interests. The Czar commented succinctly that "we are masters of northern Iran." And in Persia a small Russian military training force in the country intervened to suppress a popular revolt against the Shah. Nicholas wrote: "the Shah can save Persia and his throne only by immediately dispersing the Mejlis and the other revolutionary mobs."

The Russian chief of staff was unhappy with giving up the threat to India and told the British ambassador so. Sazanov calculated, however, that the British, in pursuing their vital interest in Europe, would make further concessions in Central Asia in order to maintain the 1907 agreement; accordingly the Russians violated the understanding in Iran from the outset, encroaching on both the neutral and the British sphere. And Sazanov was right, in his calculation. Grey, in fact, concluded that as a result of the 1907 agreement Britain would have to abandon its old policy of denying the straits to Russia. On the other hand, before the agreement Sazanov had feared the growth of pan-Islam, exploited by the British, and the Russians had been concerned that Afghanistan under British tutelage would threaten Russian gains in the area, after the British began to reform and retrain the Afghan army. Thus it was a bargain of mutual interest and remained intact until 1946.

There were clear limits to the Anglo-Russian rapprochement. In June 1908 Edward VII and Nicholas II met at Reval, a symbol of reconciliation. The British urged the Russians to build up their army so as to act as the arbiters of peace if a critical situation arose 'in seven or eight years time'. But Izvolski refused to be drawn: "it was imperative that Russia should act with the greatest prudence toward Germany, and give the latter Power no cause for complaint that the improvement of the relations of Russia and England had entailed a corresponding deterioration of the relations of Russia with Germany". Soon afterwards he told Clemenceau that there could be no question of signing 'an Anglo-Franco-Russian agreement; and the Russian general staff insisted on an agreement with the French that a German mobilization against Great Britain would not bring the Franco-Russian alliance into

-34-

operation.

THE COMING OF THE WAR

(Based on AJP Taylor). Russian caution over its alliadicne
obligations reflected its weakness. She needed a long period
of peace, and having made herself secure in the Middle and Far
East, she could have it. But Izvolski itched for some dramatic
success. On 3 February 1908 he proposed to the council of
ministers an Anglo-Russian military action against Turkey
'which might lead to dazzling results'. The other ministers
were horrified: Russia had no money, no navy, no arms.
Stolypin, the prime minister, declared: 'only after some years
of complete quiet can Russia speak again as in the past'.

Izvolski ignored the warning. He determined to play the
game on his own and secured the approval of Nicholas II for his
plan of getting the Straits open to Russian warships.

The Austrian foreign minister, Aehrenthal, wanted to
restore the prestige of the monarchy by some great stroke, the
annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina, which the monarchy had
administered since 1878.

On July 2, 1908 Izvolski offered to support the annexation
of Bosnia and Hercegovina by Austria-Hungary, if she in return
would support Russian designs at the Straits. The two met at
Buchlov on 15 September and struck their bargain. Izvolski
supposed that both questions, involving as they did changes in
the treaty of Berlin, would have to be submitted to a European
conference; and he went leisurely off to collect the approval
of the other Powers. Aehrenthal, however, proclaimed the
annexation of the two provinces on 5 October. Izvolski had
just arrived in Paris, with nothing accomplished. To make
matters worse, he was repudiated by his own government.
Stolypin cared nothing for the Straits and much for Slav
sentiment; he threatened to resign, and Nicholas II had to
pretend he knew nothing of Izvolski's schemes.

Asquith and Grey, supported by Edward VII, would have liked
to make some concession to Izvolski; the cabinet thought only
of the effect on public opinion and overruled them.

Germany determined to stand by Austria-Hungary less to keep
her firmly on their side than to humiliate Russia for having
made an entente with Great Britain. Bulow laid down: "Since
Russia demonstratively joined England at Reval, we could not
give up Austria. The European situation was so changed that we
must be more reserved to Russian wishes than we used to be."
The Germans went back to the policy of the "new course", which
Caprivi and Holstein had followed in 1891: they promised to
support Austria-Hungary in the Balkans whatever action she

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took.

In February the French told the Russians that the Bosnian
affair was "a question in which the vital interests of Russia
are not involved" and that "French public opinion would be
unable to comprehend that such a question could lead to a war
in which the French and Russian armies would have to take
part". Grey was prepared to hold out for a conference, but
this was no use to Izvolski. At a conference, Aehrenthal would
reveal that Izvolski had agreed to the annexation, yet Russia
would not get the opening of the Straits. Izvolski wanted
compensation for Serbia, but here Grey would not support him.

The Austrians were thus free to conquer Serbia if they
wished to do so. Instead events took a different course. For
one thing Aehrenthal took fright at the consequences of his own
policy. He decided to be content with a Serbian acknowledgment
of the annexation. This did not suit the Germans. They cared
little for humiliating Serbia, much for humiliating Russia.
The Germans summoned Izvolski to give 'a precise answer--yes or
no' whether he would acknowledge the annexation; otherwise 'we
shall draw back and let events take their course'. Izvolski
had no choice but to accept this humiliation; ten days later
the Serbs did the same. The Bosnian crisis was over. Though
the Russians had been humiliated, they no more took the course
of subservience to Germany than France had done after the fall
of Delcasse. On the contrary, they began the reconstruction of
their armed forces on a large scale.
*****

By 1910-12, Russian diplomacy was exhausted. Its strategic
position was dangerous. It was allied to the principal
revisionist power against Russia's two immediate neighbors. The
practical result was that the General Staff took over Russian
policy, because mobilization became critical. Moreover, Russia
faced two fronts in Europe, Germany and Austria. As a
consequence, it adopted the most ironic political strategy, to
leave its Polish salient undefended planning on attacks in East
Prussia and Galicia, and even abandoning Warsaw if necessary.
It may have been sound military planning, but it meant the
bankruptcy of Russian foreign policy.

5

OVERVIEW

Certain characteristics of Russian foreign policy can be
deduced from the Czarist period. It was Peter who laid the
foundations for the modern Russian (and Soviet) state: a highly
centralized autocracy, dependent on a large standing army for
its external security and a large police establishment for
internal security; a massive bureaucracy to administer far
flung expanses populated by radically different nationalities,
all collected under one empire.

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Peter turned a preoccupation with physical security, inherited from centuries of vulnerability, into a coherent foreign policy, dictated by Russia's political geography. He sought to push Russian frontiers as far forward as possible, not merely to gain access to outlets, but to create buffers against a renewal of the foreign pressures. He succeeded, not by guile or clever diplomacy, but by military conquests, a lesson his successors learned.

Peter also turned Russia to the West. While geography dictated that Russia would also be in Asia, it was the interaction with the West that became the determining political, cultural and economic factor. Many Russian observers came to resent this orientation, and from time to time argued for a more independent position, a more "Russian" orientation. But this never led to a self-imposed isolation, or even the flanking role played in Europe by Britain.

Nevertheless, there was also a feeling of estrangement in Russia, partly cultural but also political. In an era of enlightenment, revolution and democracy, Russia remained a bastion of reaction and repression. And this in turn strengthened a tendency already created by geopolitics to reinforce the barriers against change. Catherine had no scruples against devouring Poland once the constitutional question was raised. Her successors risked much in defending these gains, with major interventions in 1830 and 1863. It is little wonder that Stalin thought he was entitled to more or less the same dominant position in 1945.

And a familiarity with Russian preoccupation with the "Eastern Question" explains much of the Soviet policy not only in the contemporary Middle East, but in Iran and Afghanistan as well. Originally, the "Eastern Question" was a matter of security from marauding tribes, and a desire to protect the straits from hostile forces that could reach Russia through the Black Sea, as the British and French did at Sebastopol. But in time it became an offensive strategy, to partition the Ottoman Empire, to penetrate the Balkans, to dominate Iran and Afghanistan. There was an ambiguity to Russian expansion, partly defensive, partly offensive. This ambiguity was bound to lead to Western debates over Russia's intentions--a debate which reflected Russian uncertainties as well. Throughout much of the 19th century the British regarded the Russians as determined to move toward India. The Russian leaders did, indeed, toy with the idea, but most of the Russo-British clashes were over more incidents which the historical evidence suggests were less a matter of Russian strategy than opportunism. Throughout its history Russia suffered from foreign perceptions, in which it was portrayed as brutish and acquisitive.

This insensitivity to foreign opinion was compounded by

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Russian opportunism. In 1871, when Europe was occupied with the Franco-Prussian war, Gorchakov denounced the Treaty of Paris, prohibiting Russian warships in the Black Sea. When the British were caught up in a crisis in the Sudan, in the 1880s, the Russians moved in Central Asia. World War I had barely begun before St. Petersburg demanded the Straits; within a year it was accomplished by secret agreement.

It is worth noting that in certain crises, the Crimea, the early stages of the Turkish War of 1878, the pre war negotiations with Japan, before 1904, a reasonable settlement was within reach but Russian policy was unable to engage in the diplomacy of nuance that was required. When it tried to bull its way through, at San Stefano and in the Bosninan affair, it suffered a defeat.

Russian foreign policy, of course, was the product of the autocracy. All of the Czars interested themselves in foreign affairs. Alexander III reassured Giers that he, the Czar, would run the foreign office during a prolonged recuperation of the Foreign Minister. The social and political structure that grew during the 18th and 19th centuries, however, became more and more brittle. Gradually it became a police state. There should have been a warning, at least by 1905, that the situation was becoming desperate and dangerous. This in itself argued for a more cautious, less adventuristic policy; as advocated by Stolypin. Russia needed a breather, but the opposite became the reality. (And therein lies some cause for concern in analyzing the Soviet situation.)

The Czars were remarkably consistent, given their widely different backgrounds and temperaments. The exception was Nicholas II. He was the first Czar to conduct a global policy, in both East and West, and it proved disastrous. He dragged Russia into a Far Eastern adventure for the first time, and allowed Russia to become imprisoned in an alliance system that virtually insured war with Germany.

Before 1914 Russia had fought Prussia only once, during the Seven Year wars. The shift from the Eastern alliance to the French, and eventually the British, was a major revolution in Russian diplomacy, brought on in part by Russian ambitions in the Balkans and Asia. But there was also a mindlessness to the Franco-Russian alliance; it made far less strategic sense to Russia than the British alliance; an alliance with French revisionism almost guaranteed Russian involvement in a war against Germany.

Russian policy was remarkably tenacious. On two issues it usually prevailed when it was firm and patient--in Poland and to a lesser extent in the Near East. But when it tried a policy of maneuvering from 1893 through 1916, it failed.

COMMUNIST FOREIGN POLICY

The Bolsheviks had well-developed theories of class
struggle, economic determinism, the causes of wars and
imperialism, etc., but they had no specific idea of how to
conduct a foreign policy. Foreign policy was subsumed in the
broad theory of imperialism. Since a nation's foreign policy
reflected its class interests, it followed that a revolutionary
foreign policy would mean promoting the solidarity with the
workers movements everywhere, opposing the capitalists and
combating imperialism. Moreover, the capitalist states were
fated to struggle against each other, increasingly so in
capitalism's higher stages of which imperialism was the last,
and final stage.

All of this meant that the revolution would take care of
the mundane affairs of state. There would be no need for a
practical foreign policy, that is, a policy separate from the
revolution. Most Bolsheviks believed that the revolution would
break out in the most advanced industrial societies, probably
in Germany; hence a Russian foreign policy was even more
unlikely. Lenin had written extensively on imperialism, but
almost nothing on what the foreign policy of a socialist state
should be like, because he could not conceive of it, outside
the context of a European revolution. Thus, when the
Bolsheviks were successful in 1917, Lenin and all of his
followers believed that the survival of the Soviet state
depended on the outbreak of a revolution in Europe; foreign
policy and diplomacy would mean encouraging the inevitable.

But the Bolsheviks had not counted on inheriting a state at
war. They rationalized the situation by assuming that ending
the war and promoting a European revolution were one and the
same process. Only shortly before the revolution, Lenin had
speculated that if the warring powers refused to make peace
with Russia, then the war would become a "just" war, and the
Russians would be strengthened by the uprising of the
proletariat in the countries that continued fighting.

Thus the first foreign policy decree, issued on the day
after the revolution, was the Decree on Peace. The first
foreign minister was Leon Trotsky, who saw his task as little
more than that of a clerk, whose job it would be to publish a
few secret treaties -- "I will issue a few revolutionary
proclamations to the peoples of the world and shut up shop."
He did in fact publish the secret treaties. "The abolition of
secret diplomacy is the primary condition of an honorable,
popular and really democratic foreign policy," he said.

Bolshevik illusions began to crumble quickly. The German

- 2 -

high command agreed to an armistice during which there would be negotiations for a peace treaty. Those negotiations, Trotsky claimed, would be a prosecution of the Germans. He relished the chance to debate a non-annexationist peace with the Germans, but he did not confront a diplomat at Brest; rather the German side was led by General Max Hoffmann, the Chief of Staff of the Eastern Front. The Germans did agree to extend the armistice and Hoffmann even agreed to the "honorable" condition, that the Germans would not transfer troops to the Western front.

But the German demands were brutal: most of the Ukraine, all of the Baltic. At one point, tiring of Soviet propaganda, Hoffmann tabled a map with a broad blue line slashed across it, showing what the Germans wanted. On January 20, 1918, this provoked the first and perhaps the single most significant debate on Soviet foreign policy: whether to accept German terms, or refuse and fight a revolutionary war. Opinion was sharply divided. Lenin, supported by Stalin, was for appeasement; Trotsky and Bukharin were for a revolutionary war. As was his custom Lenin formulated his arguments at length, in his Theses on the Question of the Immediate Conclusion of a Separate and Annexationist Peace. Both Lenin and Trotsky believed that a revolution in Europe was coming, and soon. Lenin believed that it would be stimulated by withdrawing from the war, letting the conflict continue between Germany and the Western powers, thus hastening the revolution. The concession would be temporary. Trotsky thought that accepting a peace would betray the revolution: his policy was "neither war nor peace."

Lenin argued strongly that if the German revolution did not break out, then Russia would suffer a "smashing defeat" which would compel a far more disadvantageous separate peace, "a peace moreover, which would be concluded, not by a Socialist government, but by some other.... Such being the state of affairs, it would be absolutely impermissible tactics to stake the fate of the Socialist revolution which has begun in Russia merely on the chance that the German revolution may begin in the immediatete future.... Such tactics would be a reckless gamble. We have no right to take such risks."

The first round of the debate was a compromise. Trotsky would return to Brest and play for time. But the Germans refused and Trotsky simply walked out of the negotiations, proclaiming that the war was over. A few days later the German military notified the Soviets that military operations would resume. This precipitated the final debate. Lenin again argued for accepting German demands. Trotsky, contrary to Soviet myths, abstained, so that Lenin carried the day. Stalin advised waiting, but Lenin intervened:

"Stalin is wrong when he says that it is possible not to

- 3 -

sign. These conditions must be signed. If you do not sign them, you will sign the death warrant of the Soviet power within three weeks.... The German revolution is not yet ripe. That will take months. The terms must be accepted."

In the years to come Soviet leaders justified this decision because it pitted the capitalists against each other; it was the split in the capitalist world, during the war, that enabled Soviet power to survive. In other words, by making a temporary peace with Germany, the war continued and the Allies and the Central powers could not combine against the new Soviet state. But at the same time, the separate peace destroyed one of the fundamental Marxist propositions, that is, that all capitalists were alike. Lenin took this position at the debate:

"By concluding a separate peace, we are freeing ourselves in the largest measure possible at the present moment from both warring imperialist groups; by utilizing their mutual enmity we utilize the war which makes a bargain between them against us difficult."

Karl Radek later wrote that this "fundamental fact" stood at the cradle of Soviet foreign policy.

Out of the crisis of Brest-Litosvk emerged, albeit gradually, a dual policy, a synthesis of a national foreign policy and a revolutionary one. On the one hand, it was argued in an early Central Committee Resolution:

"By upholding Soviet power we render the best and most powerful support to the proletariat of all countries in its unprecedentedly difficult and onerous struggle against its own bourgeoisie. There could be no greater blow to the cause of socialism than the collapse of Soviet power in Russia."

On the other hand, the Bolsheviks had to disavow traditional modes of thinking about foreign affairs. Thus Lenin wrote:

"We do not stand for the state, we do not defend the status of a great Power: of Russia nothing is left save Great Russia. These are not national interests; we affirm national interests of socialism, the interests of world socialism are higher than national interests, higher than the interests of the states. We are defencists of the socialist fatherland."

Brest brought on a cumbersome concept of national interests, defined as socialist interests. The potential contradictions and inconsistencies were easily rationalized: "We are convinced that the most consistent socialist policy can be reconciled with the sternest realism and most level-headed practicality."

- 4 -

The policy being pursued was in fact a strategic retreat, to survive a period of danger -- danger from foreign intervention. As Lenin described it in 1921:

"The foreign policy of the Soviet power must not be changed in any respect. Our military preparation is still not completed, and therefore our general maxim remains as before -- to tack, to retreat, to wait while continuing this preparation with all our might."

Lenin, however, had not yet come to peaceful coexistence. The revolutionary flame had not died, and was to revive periodically especially in connection with events in Germany. But it is clear that the new Soviet government was adopting something resembling a foreign policy. It was still based on the assumption of a division of the world into two camps, and a struggle between those camps, but it allowed for the possibility that the Soviet state might survive, without the revolution in Europe. Thus Lenin answered charges against his policies:

"We are living not merely in a state, but in a system of states; and it inconceivable that the Soviet republic should continue to exist for a long period side by side with imperialist states. Ultimately one or the other must conquer. Until this end occurs a number of terrible clashes between the Soviet republic and bourgeois states is inevitable."

By 1920-21 Soviet policy had taken the final step, acknowledging the needs of a more traditional policy. Thus Radek said that "if our capitalist partners abstain from counter-revolutionary activities in Russia, the Soviet Government will abstain from carrying out revolutionary activities in capitalist countries." Even more to the point was foreign minister Chicherin's pronouncement:

"There may be differences of opinion as to the duration of the capitalist system, but at present the capitalist system exists, so that a modus vivendi must be found in order that our socialist states and the capitalist states may coexist peacefully and in normal relation with one another. This is a necessity in the interests of all."

Since that period, the treaty of Brest has been the symbol of a pragmatic policy; whenever a left-right debate occurs over foreign policy it is invariably couched in terms of Lenin and the choices he confronted before Brest-Litovsk. In his anniversary address in November 1987, Gorbachev spoke of the moral and political victory of the Brest peace, which "those who treat Marxism dogmatically cannot understand." And in this same speech, probably alluding to his own situation, Gorbachev praised Lenin for achieving a "breathing space."

A current Soviet article follows.

XXXIX, NO. 40, 1987

THE CURRENT DIGEST OF THE SOVIET PRESS

The 1918 Brest Treaty: Lenin vs. Trotsky

BOVIN RECOUNTS CONFLICT WITHIN PARTY OVER 'HUMILIATING' PEACE WITH GERMANY; LENIN'S IDEA OF 'BREATHING SPELL' WON OUT OVER BUKHARIN'S REVOLUTIONARY WAR, TROTSKY'S 'NO WAR, NO PEACE'

This Is How We Began: THE HARSH SCHOOL OF BREST. (By Aleksandr Bovin. Izvestia, Sept. 20, pp. 1, 3, 4,000 words. Condensed text:)... While calling for a just peace, Lenin by no means denied the right of peoples to fight a just war in order to win such a peace. At the same time, he understood that there are situations in which any peace—even the most unjust, vile and humiliating peace—is more precious and more necessary than the most "beautiful," most just war.

Let us recall our Revolution at the beginning of 1918. The Bolshevik Party was going through a grave crisis. Normally, it was linked to the formation of the "left" opposition and the struggle between the supporters and the opponents of peace with Germany. In essence, the question was whether or not the Russian Revolution would survive and whether or not the new regime, the new state could be preserved.

The extremely tense drama of those days is represented in a most concentrated form in the stenographic report of the Seventh Extraordinary Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) [RCP(B)], which opened on March 6, 1918, in the Taurida Palace (Petrograd). For us, accustomed to the measured and ceremonial pace of Party Congresses, it is difficult to imagine this fierce clash of brilliant intellects and opposing political positions. People who knew one another well, who had prepared the Revolution together and had triumphed together, now, a few months after October, were parting company in a most decided way over the question of how to save the Revolution.

At that time, it was taken as axiomatic that there was an inseparable link between the Russian Revolution and the world revolution. ...

Disagreements began when it became necessary to shift from general theses to concrete policies. Would peace with Germany—an extortionate, obscene peace—ease the situation for Soviet Russia? Would peace with Germany bring the German—and world—revolution closer? Would a peaceful breathing spell save the Soviet regime?

V. I. Lenin insisted that the maximum advantage had to be taken of all the opportunities that peace, a peaceful breathing spell, could provide. N. I. Bukharin, rejecting these opportunities, put his stakes on a revolutionary war. L. D. Trotsky, trying to " synthesize " the two approaches, took a neither-one-thing-nor-the-other position: We won't wage war, but we won't make peace.

V. I. Lenin's thinking, his reasoning, was an argument from contraries, so to speak. Russia had been exhausted and weakened by war. The Russian Army did not want to fight and would not fight. Continuing the war with Germany would lead inevitably to Russia's defeat and the death of the Revolution. But peace with Germany would provide a peaceful breathing spell and would make it possible, if wise actions were taken, to strengthen the position of the Revolution, save up energy, and continue a revolutionizing influence on bourgeois Europe. Yes, it was a humiliating, ignominious peace, but "one has to know how to retreat," Lenin said at the Congress. ...

In general, everything possible and impossible had to be done to save the Revolution in Russia. That was V. I. Lenin's position.

As far as the "left" Communists were concerned, they called Lenin's hopes of taking advantage of a breathing spell illusions. They claimed that a peaceful breathing spell would provide nothing. It was not peace but war that would make it possible to unite the people, to unite the Army, to weaken German imperialism and to bring a German revolu-

tion closer. "What we have before us," Bukharin concluded in his co-report, "is a very real prospect—one that must be taken up, because it is the only prospect, the only prospect in the sense of being possible and necessary—of a war against international capital, which will be in the nature of a civil war against that capital."

V. I. Lenin, as a realistically thinking politician, admitted the possibility that the Revolution might be defeated. But Lenin was categorically opposed to the suicide of the Revolution, and the latter—that is, the deliberate sacrifice of the Russian Revolution to the world revolution, the merciless "hara-kiri" of the Soviet regime, as it was called at the Congress—stemmed directly from the position of the "left" Communists. ...

In order to get a better sense of the atmosphere and the mood of those days, I will quote an excerpt from the memoirs of L. Stupochenko, who was at that time a member of the Petrograd Soviet. "Intoxicated by victory," she writes, "proud of our role as leaders and instigators of world revolution, surrounded by an atmosphere of enthusiasm of the international proletariat, and having risen almost instantaneously from the most humiliating enslavement to the heights of 'arbiters of the fate of the capitalist world,' could we dip our banner under the dusty boot of a German patrolman?*** We saw the glow of revolution that had blazed up over the whole world, and we believed that the shaky thrones would fall, if not today then tomorrow, under the onslaught of the proletariat, and that this bloody war, too, would be buried under the wreckage of capitalism. Why, then, was there such humiliation and shame? Wasn't it better to die, weapons in hand, for the triumph of a world revolution that was so close? Everything was so simple, so attainable."

It is easy to understand the people who said such beautiful words. They were staunch Communists who were devoted to the Revolution and ready to die for the Revolution. But there are situations in which death means desolation, in which much more courage is required not to die but to survive, to survive in spite of everything, to survive and save the Revolution. The Congress chose the second way, Lenin's way. In a roll-call vote at the morning meeting on March 8, the delegates adopted the resolution on war and peace written by V. I. Lenin (30 in favor, 12 opposed, 4 abstaining). On March 15 the Fourth Extraordinary All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which was meeting in Moscow in what is now the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions, voted for peace (784 in favor, 261 opposed, 115 abstaining). The Peace of Brest was ratified.

History loves paradoxes. Soviet Russia entered the international arena with Lenin's famous Decree on Peace, a decree proposing that all the warring peoples and their governments begin immediate talks toward the conclusion of "a just and democratic peace," that is, a peace without annexations or indemnities. The first peace treaty that Soviet Russia signed was a model of injustice and undemocratic practice, and it contained both annexations (territory amounting to about 780,000 square kilometers, with a population of 56 million people, was torn away from Soviet Russia) and indemnities (Soviet Russia was obliged to pay 3 billion rubles "to cover expenses for the upkeep of prisoners").

This should not come as a surprise. The Decree on Peace was based on the prospect of an international socialist revolution. No one at Smolny expected that the imperialist predators would "come to their senses" and turn into meek little lambs. The expectation was something else—that the imperialist war would be turned into a civil war, and that both the cause of peace and the cause of liberating the working people from all forms of bondage and all exploitation would be brought to conclusion. But events began to develop according to a different scenario. We had to deal

46

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XXXIX, NO. 40, 1938

not with peoples, not, as Lenin said, with "international
democracy," but with imperialist governments. And as long
as we were weak, we had to live not by the laws of just-
tice but by the laws of the strong. ...

The talks actually began on Dec. 3 [1917]. An ar-
mistice was signed on Dec. 15.

- A week later, on Dec. 22, peace talks began. The terms we were offered were severe. V. I. Lenin realized that, given the existing alignment of forces, sooner or later we would have to accept any terms. It was decided to drag out the talks as long as possible, so as to use the Brest rostrum to appeal to the peoples of both warring sides. By mid-January the delaying tactic was exhausted, and Lenin gave the instruction: We will give in to the ultimatum and yield our position.

The struggle within the Party intensified. On Jan. 21 the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) [RSDLP(B)] Central Committee held a conference with Party personnel. V. I. Lenin read his "Thesis on the Question of the Immediate Conclusion of a Separate and Annexationist Peace" and presented his reasoning. Of the conference participants, 15 spoke out in favor of the theses, 32 for a revolutionary war, and 16 for the "no peace, no war" formula. At a meeting of the Central Committee on Jan. 24 this formula received 9 votes, with 7 against. At a conference of the Central Committee with representatives of various political trends on Feb. 3, the majority (9-5) rejected the possibility of signing a peace treaty with Germany at that time.

Pages from documents of those fevered days make it pos-
sible to reconstruct, to recreate, the unusual nature of the
debate at the highest levels of the Party. This was not only
a political debate on a burning and controversial issue. It
was an elucidation of the theoretical sources of what was
happening. It was an analysis of a concrete and atypical
situation in a broad historical system of coordinates. ...

The episode of inner-Party struggle was a starting point for the creative interpretation of new tasks in a new and unexpected situation, for an advance through such an-unknown territory—in both a practical and a theoretical sense—as the relations between socialist and capitalist states. Even now, when that territory has been rather well explored, the Party documents from 70 years ago dealing with the Peace of Brest are viewed not only as historical evidence.

On Feb. 9, the Germans demanded that the peace treaty be signed immediately. At a meeting of the Political Commission in Brest-Litovsk: on Feb. 10, Trotsky, who had headed the Soviet delegation since Jan. 9, refused to sign the treaty.

The People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs stated: "In expectation of what we hope is the not-too-distant hour when the oppressed working classes of all countries will take power into their own hands, as the working people of Russia have done, we are withdrawing our Army and our people from the war. Our soldier-plowman should return to his fields so that this spring he can till the soil in peace, the soil that the Revolution took from the landowners and placed in the peasants' hands. Our soldier-worker should return to his workshop so that he can make there not tools of destruction but tools of construction, and, together with the plowman, build a new, socialist economy."

"We are withdrawing from the war. We are informing all peoples and their governments of this. We are issuing an order for the complete demobilization of our armies that are now confronting the troops of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. We expect and firmly believe that other peoples will soon follow our example. At the same time, we state that the terms offered us by the governments of Germany and Austria-Hungary are fundamentally at variance with the interests of all peoples. We refuse to sanction the terms that German and Austrian-Hungarian imperialism is writing with a sword in the bodies of living peoples. We cannot put the signature of the Russian Revolution to terms that will bring oppression, grief and unhappiness to millions of human beings.

"The governments of Germany and Austria-Hungary want to possess lands and peoples by right of military conquest. Let them do their deeds openly. We cannot give our blessing to coercion. We are withdrawing from the war, but we must refuse to sign a peace treaty."

That same day, by a special telegram sent from Brest, the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs directed Headquarters to issue an order terminating the state of war with Germany. On the basis of this telegram, Supreme Commander N. V. Krylenko ordered the cessation of military operations and the demobilization of the Army. After receiving a report on this, V. I. Lenin instructed N. P. Gorbunov, Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars, to send the following message to Headquarters: "Use all means at your disposal to countermand today's telegram on peace and the general demobilization of the Army on all fronts." On the following day, the Council of People's Commissars confirmed Lenin's instruction. On Feb. 16 the Germans announced that they would renew military operations at 12 noon on Feb. 18.

Some very dramatic days ensued. On the evening of the 17th, the RSDLP(B) Central Committee voted down (6-5) V.-I. Lenin's proposal that an immediate offer be made to Germany to enter into talks toward signing a peace. On Feb. 18 the Central Committee met twice. In the morning, Lenin's proposal was voted down again (7-6). It was only in the evening, when the Germans had launched an offensive along the entire front, that the Central Committee, by majority vote (7-6, with 1 abstention), adopted Lenin's proposal to resume the talks and make peace.

On Feb. 19, the Council of People's Commissars informed Berlin that it would agree to make peace. On Feb. 22 Trotsky resigned as People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, and Bukharin announced his withdrawal from the Central Committee and resigned as editor of Pravda. On the morning of the 23rd Berlin's response, dated Feb. 21, reached Petrograd. The new German terms were worse and harsher than the previous ones: Berlin dictated: "The aforementioned terms must be accepted within 48 hours. Russian representatives must leave immediately for Brest-Litovsk and sign a peace treaty there within three days, and the treaty must be ratified within a period of no longer than two weeks."

I quote from the opening section of Record of Proceed-
ings No. 45 of the Feb. 23, 1918, meeting of the
RSDLP(B) Central Committee.

"... Comrade Sverdlov reads the German terms...."

"Comrade Lenin believes that the policy of the revolu-
tionary phrase has ended, if this policy is going to con-
tinue, it will come from the government and from the Cen-
tral Committee. A revolutionary war requires an army, but
there is no army. Hence, we must accept the terms."

After an exchange of opinions, a vote was taken. In view of the fundamental importance of that vote for the fate of the Revolution, I will list the names of those present and how they voted. There were seven votes in favor of Lenin's proposal to accept the German terms immediately (Lenin, Stasova, Zinovyev, Sverdlov, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Smilge), four opposed (Bubnov, Uritsky, Bukharin and Lomov) and four abstentions (Trotsky, Krestinsky, Dzerzhinsky and Ioffe).

The new delegation that left for Brest-Litovsk was headed by G. Ya. Sokolnikov. The treaty was signed on March 3. ...

Recalling the Peace of Brest, V. I. Lenin talked about a
period of weakness, "from which we emerged as victors." A
year later, addressing delegates to the Eighth All-Russian
Conference of the RCP(B), Lenin was able to note success-
ful results "in the military field" that earlier "probably
would have been considered impossible."

In response to the question of how this "miracle" could
have happened, how socialist Russia could have held its
ground against world imperialism, V. I. Lenin assigned
primary importance to international support for our Revolu-
tion. ...

(Continued on Page 20)

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Yet the new Soviet state was isolated. It was soon to be under attack; while the Allied intervention was a haphazard affair, the war with Poland was not. In May 1921 Polish forces swiftly occupied Kiev, but were then driven back. As the Red Army approached Warsaw the Allied powers intervened, and forced a peace on both. In the meantime, Lord Curzon, then British foreign secretary, had plotted a line of division between Poland and Russia, and the Soviets were prepared to accept it. The Poles resisted, and the final settlement-armistice was where the forces stood in 1921. Twenty years later the Soviets would insist on the Curzon line as the proper boundary, but yield to Hitler in return for Lithuania.

Indeed, the Soviet government came out of the war having lost most of the Czar's conquests in the Baltic, Finland, Poland, Bessarabia, and even in the Turkish frontier. But it maintained its borders in the Far East and Central Asia.

In Central Asia, however, the retreat of the British from Iran opened a brief chance for the Soviets; they tried to establish an independent republic of Gilan, along the Caspian (Soviet troops were actually landed). Moscow had to abandon it in the face of British pressures, foreshadowing the events of 1946. But before finally withdrawing, the Soviets concluded a treaty with the new Shah (Reza Pahlavi's father). In this treaty the Soviets gained the right to intervene in the event of a third-power intervention in Persia, or if Persia were to be used as a "center for attacking Russia." This treaty was the basis for Soviet intervention during World War II, and after. The Soviets believe it remains in force though it was denounced by the Shah.

The Brest treaty established the main lines of Soviet foreign policy: a pragmatic compromise between revolutionary opportunism and realpolitik. It had Lenin's imprimatur, which made it a safe position for all his successors.

In the near term, however, the issue was: on what terms would the Soviet government coexist with the capitalist countries of Europe (and the Far East). This was decided at Rapallo in 1922.

There is no need to recite all of the details. In 1922, the Russian delegation led by Chicherin was in Genoa to discuss the problem of war debts. The Soviets feared an Allied insistence on debt repayments; then Germany might join the Allies in such demands, in order to escape from new reparations. The Germans feared the opposite: that the Allies would invite the Russians in to share in reparations. There was the making of a German-Soviet bargain, especially since the Soviets had established a clandestine channel to the German general staff. To the surprise and chagrin of the Allied powers at Genoa, the two delegations slipped away to Rapallo

- 6 -

and signed an agreement.

 content ?

The accommodation between the two outcasts has grown in the years to symbolize a more sinister arrangement -- the German eastern card, and so forth. The Germans did profit from Rapallo. Soon after they were readmitted to the European concert, via Locarno, largely under Stresemann, who received a Nobel prize (while his country was secretly rearming in Russia). For the Soviets, however, Rapallo had less significance. It did lead to recognition, which would have probably come sooner or later. But more important it did demonstrate that Germany and Russia could still combine, at least on negative terms -- thus forshadowing 1939. At the time Radek saw its significance in terms of a European balance:

> "The policy of strangling Germany implied in fact the destruction of Russia as a Great Power; for, no matter how Russia is governed, it is always to her interest that Germany should exist... A Russia weakened to the utmost by the war could neither have remained a Great Power nor acquired the economic and technical means for her industrial reconstruction, unless she had in the existence of Germany a counterweight to the preponderance of the Allies."

George Kennan concludes that Rapallo was the first great diplomatic victory for the Soviets, for it successfully split the western ranks, and he credits Chicherin with a skillful exploitation of the situation at Genoa. Kennan offers this as an example:

> "...the standard components for a rousing Soviet diplomatic success: one part Soviet resourcefulness and singlemindedness of purpose; two parts amateurism, complacency and disunity on the part of the West. It is not the last time, in examining the history of Soviet foreign policy, that we shall see this recipe play a part, as the Soviet government advances from the initial weakness of 1921 to the pinnacle of power and success it occupies in the wake of World War II."

Despite the ostensible victory, Russia remained isolated from the main currents of European security negotiations. Locarno was reached without any Soviet involvement, even though it made Russia's strategic position far worse. It encouraged the deception that there was a cordon sanitaire in the East, even though the small governments were only viable with Great Power support. Locarno signaled that France would not automatically support the settlement in the East, making the area vulnerable to Germany or to the Soviet Union, and especially to those two in combination. Moreover, two of the major East European governments -- Poland and Rumania -- were anti-Soviet. This was to prove critical in 1938-39, when access for the passage of Soviet forces was an obstacle to Soviet guarantees for Czechoslovakia or even for Poland.

- 7 -

In the 1920s and well into the 1930s foreign policy was conducted by professionals. First by Chicherin, and then Litvinov. Chicherin had been a clerk in the old Russian Foreign office, was of an aristocratic background, had been a Menshevik, and had been in a British jail during the revolution. Kennan describes him:

> "... well educated; a scholarly person, not really a
> Bolshevik by background but an idealistic, intellectual
> socialist who had thrown in his lot with the Soviet cause at
> the time of the Revolution and now passionately believed in it
> ... a man who never spared himself; who was without personal
> life, who worked twenty hours out of every twenty four; who
> wrote every diplomatic note personally; whose office was the
> scene of a monumental scholar's disorder ... who worked by
> preference at night and detested daylight, and whose eyes
> consequently were red and blinking, like those of a ferret ...
> who lived in his work (and) pursued it with a seriousness, a
> dedication, a self denial, and an eloquence that put every
> bourgeois statesmen of his day to shame...."

## STALIN

Gradually, especially after the rise of Hitler, Stalin emerged as the chief policy maker. He of course was enormously powerful almost from Lenin's death. But the evidence suggests he did not interfere much in foreign affairs until the early 1930s. Even then his pronouncements were cryptic and not especially enlightening. He had written one long essay in 1919 that claimed the world was split into two camps, and the struggle between the camps would determine world history, but this merely echoed the work of others.

At the 17th Party Congress in 1934 Stalin delivered a major address on foreign policy: he warned of the coming of a new war, but claimed that Soviet policy would continue to pursue peace. In fact, this was the beginning of a new policy of maneuver. First came the tactics of the united front in the Comintern, then the state treaty with France, and next came Soviet intervention in the Spanish civil war. Litvinov became the champion of collective security, and Russia joined the League's disarmament negotiations in Geneva. On its face Soviet policy made sense, to block Hitler was the main objective. But at the same time, Stalin launched an internal purge of vast proportions, that eventually wrecked the General Staff. This made little sense if he anticipated a clash with Hitler; and the clash with the Japanese was already well advanced. Kennan explains this by claiming that Stalin's foreign policy was no different from the protection of his personal position; sometimes this coincided with Soviet state

- 8 -

interests, other times it did not. Thus what Stalin wanted was that his rivals be kept weak; this applied internally, as well as abroad. He did not want them to be communist, especially the smaller states of Eastern Europe, but he wanted that they "should expend their strength not against him but against each other. For this reason his favored strategy was a simple one. It could be summed up in the simple phrase "divide and rule."

This does in fact explain in some degree the decisive action in 1939 when Stalin chose an alliance with Hitler over an alliance with the British and French. He had been shocked by Munich, so much so that he was willing to take the risk of negotiating with the British, knowing full well that Munich was an effort to turn Hitler to the east. Yet, as early as March 1939, he made a scarcely veiled overture to Hitler, in his address at the 18th Party Congress, when he said that the Soviet Union would not allow itself to be drawn into "conflicts by warmongers who are accustomed to have others pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them."

Later, when Molotov and Ribbentrop were signing the Non-Aggression Treaty, Molotov observed that the Germans had correctly interpreted Stalin's statement as an offer to bargain. What did in fact happen is well known. A little more detail

What is striking is the consistency of the German negotiations as far as Soviet and historical Russian objectives are concerned. First there was the partition of Poland along the Vistula, but this agreement was then amended to give the Germans more territory; the effect was to give Stalin roughly the Curzon line, which he was to insist on in the negotiations with the Allies in 1944-45. The Soviets were compensated by Hitler with the transfer of Lithuania to the Soviet sphere; these spheres had been demarcated in the secret protocol to the pact so that Latvia and Estonia were in the Soviet sphere, as well as Finland.

In a draft of a German proposal for a four-power pact later, in November 1940, it was suggested that the Soviet Union's direction of interest was the Indian Ocean. But the Soviets made a counterproposal that included: German withdrawal from Finland, Soviet bases on the Black Sea, a sphere of influence south of Batum and Baku, (i.e., the Persian Gulf) which would be recognized as "the center of the aspirations of the Soviet Union." All of Stalin's predecessors would have recognized these familiar Russian demands.

Soviet behavior during this brief alliance with Hitler is also worth noting. The Germans were constantly surprised at Stalin's brazen effrontry. He took the Baltic states, without consultation or warning. He took Bessarabia in the same manner, causing a strong German reaction. Stalin even proposed to guarantee Bulgaria and then Yugoslavia, in both cases

- 9 -

causing the Germans to move. On the other hand, Stalin was
scrupulous in meeting the schedule of supplies to Germany; even
on the very eve of the invasion he ordered Mikoyan to permit a
shipment of supplies to leave port.

Contemporary Soviet leaders have each praised Stalin's
decision, while criticizing him for not preparing adequately for
the war. Thus Gorbachev defended Stalin on the grounds that
the Western Allies wanted to block the Hilter pact to deprive
Russia of the time to make preparations for the "inevitable"
attack; and that moreover, the U.S.S.R. faced "a very real
threat of war on two fronts."

When the war did come to Russia, the Soviet Union found
itself allied to Britain. During a visit to Moscow by Anthony
Eden, in December 1941, with German tanks within sight of
Moscow, Stalin made the very same demands on the British that
he had made to Hitler: The Soviet Union would regain its
frontiers of 1941 with Finland and Rumania, the Soviet frontier
with Poland would be the Curzon line, the U.S.S.R. would obtain
a guarantee of exit from the Black Sea, and there would be a
division of Germany, with Bavaria and the Rhineland being split
off. Stalin told Eden that there were two further questions to
discuss: German reparations, and "how were we to keep peace and
order in Europe after the war." He suggested a council of
victorious powers with a "military force at its disposal."

This particular meeting ended inconclusively, with Molotov
criticizing the British for refusing to support common war aims.

By the time the war did end, or at least by Yalta, Stalin
had achieved his territorial aims unilaterally, and his
attention had shifted westward to Germany. Indeed, it is
symbolically indicative of the Soviet advance, that in 1915 the
debate was over Poland, and the Great Powers successfully
denied Russian expansion into Prussia; in 1945 the issue was
over the limit to Russian-Soviet expansions westward into
Germany.

Stalin saw the post-war situation in terms of power. The
debate over Poland was mystifying to him. It was clearly in
his sphere; after all he and Churchill had negotiated a
percentage division of East Europe; Western refusal to
recognize it was perverse, either a harbinger of a new
conflict, or a cynical bargaining ploy. At one point in 1945,
Stalin remarked to Djilas that "this war" would be different
from the past: "whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it
his own social system -- as far as his army can reach. It
cannot be otherwise." Later he predicted that Germany would
recover quickly and, he told Djilas, "we will recover in
fifteen or twenty years and then we'll have another go at it."

And this was Stalin's post-war diplomacy; to round out the

- 10 -

gains of the war in Eastern Europe, achieve a Western
recognition of this fact, and then create a system that would
put the Soviet Union in the best position when the conflict
inevitably resumed. He would have preferred to do this by
maintaining a neutral and weak, divided Germany. He also
preferred to do this in concert with his wartime allies; and
even as he was absorbing Eastern Europe, East Germany remained
in a special category. It was at this point that he
miscalculated: Stalin assumed that the West had agreed at a
minimum to the division of Germany, and that the Soviets could
therefore absorb Berlin, an anachronism behind Stalin's lines.
Hence the blockade should have resulted in a final bargain;
again there is also reason to believe that he saw Korea as
falling in his sphere, and only requiring a push.

By 1952 it was clear that Stalin had erred, and badly so. At this point there is the mystery of his apparent shift in tactics. In his debate with the economist Varga, who held that capitalism was stabilizing itself, and that war between capitalists was no longer inevitable, Stalin countered with his elaborate Economic Problems of Socialism, which boiled down to the assertion that capitalism was not stabilizing itself, and that wars between capitalists were more likely than wars between capitalism and socialism. It is possible to interpret this as a retreat from the Lenin theory of the inevitability of war, more likely it was a tactical shift by Stalin to defuse the growing tensions with the United States. It was at this point that Stalin sent his intriguing "peace note" of March 1952 to the Germans suggesting that there might still be a neutral, unified Germany and a final peace treaty. Some observers think that Stalin was preparing for just such a deal, and some evidence of this is contained by the behavior of Malenkov and Beria immediately after Stalin's death. They too seemed to be ready to sell out their East German comrades, and were so charged later by Khrushchev. His attacks on them were self-serving; so the mystery of this interlude remains.

Stalin's policy was well within the Russian tradition and
Lenin's assessments. He saw Soviet interests in historical
European dimensions and his territorial demands were quite
familiar. But he also had to contend with the success of his
policy. In acquiring an East European empire Stalin had to
alter his narrow concept of security, defined almost
exclusively in physical terms, that had dominated his pre-war
and wartime diplomacy. In the pact with Hitler he had
compromised his ideological principles to gain time. Yet after
the war he had to be concerned about the threat to Soviet
dominance by the creation of several clients in the People's
Democracies. An empire that included Czechs and Hungarians and
so forth obviously posed different ideological problems as well
as new foreign policy requirements than the more restricted
Soviet empire. Hence his campaign against the Soviet party,
especially Zhdanov's internal purges, and the purges in Eastern

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Europe that followed. Discipline was even more of a problem after 1949, when the Chinese entered the communist family. Thus Stalin, to maintain internal tensions before 1952, laid down principles that were of doubtful validity: the inevitability of war, the single road to socialism, the worsening of the class struggle, and the sole leadership of the Soviet Union in the communist camp. On this basis he not only extended his domain over Eastern Europe, and potentially over Peking, but he made these areas part of a new security sphere. It was the demand for recognition of this sphere in Europe that dominated his post-war foreign policy toward the West. These states were not only physical and ideological buffers, however, but advanced outposts from which another offensive could be launched.

On the other hand, Stalin was always suspicious of those regimes beyond his reach, especially those that had genuine revolutionary credentials, that were not creations of the Red Army. It was no accident that his quarrels began with Tito, who had achieved an independent stature. And his attempts to humiliate Mao, personally keeping him waiting for weeks in Moscow in 1950, and then imposing advantageous terms in the 1950 security treaty -- were vintage Stalin. Finally, Stalin was contemptuous of the countries that were of a socialist orientation. In his world where power ruled, there was no place for leaders, e.g., Nehru, who did not appreciate Stalin's system, or the way Stalin interpreted it, which meant subordination and obedience to his will. Stalin was more concerned with consolidating his empire than extending it, especially in areas where his personal power would not hold.

Perhaps most important, Stalin seemed not to understand, or at least not to appreciate, the nuclear revolution. Some of his most daring adventures were at a time when the Soviet Union had no nuclear weapons at all, or a very very few. Shortly after returning from Potsdam in 1945, where he was officially informed about the American bomb, Stalin summoned the Soviet physicist Kurchatov, and said: "A single demand of you, comrades. Provide us with atomic weapons in the shortest possible time." Yet, politically and strategically, Stalin like Mao, refused to accept the decisive nature of nuclear weapons.

A leading Soviet military figure complained that:

"Stalin's scornful statements were the reasons why our military thought was not directed in time to an objective and far reaching evaluation of the new instruments of warfare, to the discovery and analysis of new phenomena of armed conflict and of the revolution in military affairs which had developed."

True to his character Stalin sought to deprive his enemies of any advantages from nuclear weapons -- hence his various

- 12 -

peace campaigns and his disarmament proposals, but the full
impact of the nuclear revolution did not occur until Nikita
Khrushchev had assumed the direction of Soviet foreign policy.

By 1953, Stalin's policies had led the Soviet Union into a
dead end: hostility with the West, a prospective rearmament of
Germany, potential conflict with China, defections in East
Europe, and a worse economic situation than the world could
appreciate (famine in the Ukraine). Even Soviet military
power, while mammoth, was antiquated and out of touch with
nuclear realities.

Before turning to Khrushchev, it is worth noting the
evaluation by Gorbachev of the sweep of Soviet foreign policy.
In his address on the 70th anniversary, he called attention to
three mistakes in foreign affairs:

--"We did not make full use of the opportunties that opened
before us both before and after World II.

--"We failed to translate the enormous moral prestige with
which the Soviet Union emerged from the war into effective
efforts to consolidate the peaceloving democratic forces and to
stop those who orchestrated the cold war.

--"We did not always respond adequately to imperialist
provocations."

In short, his predecessors should have been more
aggressive, and tougher.

## KHRUSHCHEV AND BREZHNEV

Khrushchev marked a sharp break with Stalin's policies,
even though there were strong common elements. The transition
from Stalin to Khrushchev reflected the shift from a regional
conception of Soviet security to a global one, from a basically
defensive orientation to an offensive one and from the era of
World War II to the nuclear-rocket age.

As the Soviet Union became a global power it assumed more
extensive commitments and responsibilities, and therefore more
risks. As the nuclear era unfolded, the strategic competition
with the United States became the dominant factor in judging
the overall "correlation of forces". De-Stalinization, and the
Geneva summit led to an easing of tensions, but the atmosphere,
in turn, encouraged centrifugal tendencies in the East bloc,
which in 1956 interrupted the policy of peaceful coexistence.
Finally, of course, Khrushchev seriously worsened the dispute
with China, though it must be said that he tried to contain it
to an ideological polemic and debate within the communist

- 13 -

world. It was Brezhnev who turned it into a genuine struggle for power. The central focus of Khrushchev's policy, however, was the same as Stalin's -- Germany and Europe as the arena for pursuing the contest with the United States.

It is an interesting commentary that Western statesmen continued to believe for a long period that if they could satisfy Soviet "security interest" the unification of Germany could be settled. After 1953 this was a serious misperception of Soviet policy; the division of Germany had become inseparable from Soviet security interests. With Molotov back in command, Moscow began a series of maneuvers to turn the Western interest in negotiations to the Soviet advantage. The Soviet objective was no longer to test the incentive for unity but to forestall and defeat the rearmament of Germany. This meant focusing initially on the weakest link, France. Molotov in 1953-54 skillfully played off French interest in an Indochina settlement against Soviet interests in Central Europe. Eventually the Soviets struck a bargain with Pierre Mendes-France; in return for Soviet intervention to settle the remaining issues in Indochina, thus permitting Mendes-France to make his self-imposed deadline for a settlement, the French killed the European Defense Community. Even if no explicit bargain was made (Mendes-France denies it), this was the clear implication, and both sides performed according to expectations.

For all the skill displayed by the Soviets in this period, what followed is still baffling. How could the Soviets permit the rapid turnabout executed by Eden and Dulles that led to the Western European Union and the national rearmament of Germany? The tensions within the Kremlin and the infighting that was almost constant until July 1957, played their role. Khrushchev clearly wanted to open up a more flexible policy, leading to the Austrian treaty and the reconciliation with Tito. Molotov resisted. It may be that he was wary of experimenting in Germany, lest it play into Khrushchev's hands. Or it may simply be that a collective leadership could not make decisions.

Nevertheless, by 1955 the Soviets had set a new course. The attempt to keep Germany both divided and weak was failing, and the necessity of keeping Germany divided became paramount. At the Geneva summit of 1955, the Western statesmen consoled themselves that war was now less likely; that a new "spirit" had been created, as if the problems in Europe were ones that could be solved by atmospherics. But the consequences were more clearly spelled out by Bulganin and Khrushchev during their stopover in East Berlin. Their statements made it clear that the division of Germany was now considered complete, and that this had been the real meaning of Geneva.

From that point forward Soviet policy shifted more clearly to new objectives: first, to ratify the division of Germany, and second, to limit and constrain the pace and scope of German

- 14 -

rearmament. The tactics were to vary, but the priorities were clear. Despite continuing illusions in the West reflected in disengagement debates, there was never any real opportunity that the U.S.S.R. would relinquish its hold over Eastern Germany; the problem for Moscow was to obtain German and Western recognition of that fact.

The intense phase of the campaign to seal the division of Germany came in the wake of the announcement of a Soviet ICBM capability and the launch of the first Soviet space satellite in the fall of 1957. This was the period of the so-called "missile gap"; a shift in the balance of power seemed to have occurred. If this were so, then Khrushchev intended to translate the shift into political gains. Thus, it was no accident that his basic demands were for Western recognition of the European division which was the main emphasis of Soviet diplomacy after Sputnik: to sign a German peace treaty and create a "free city" in Berlin.

Khrushchev badly miscalculated. It may be that he was seriously misled by the various crosscurrents of politics in the Federal Republic where "disengagement" theories enjoyed a vogue, and seemed to signal a pacifism and neutralism.

Khrushchev's intimidation of the West actually caused far greater apprehension in the East. The idea that the division of the country would become final and the opening through West Berlin would be sealed off caused a growing panic, which reached such proportions that the Soviets had to move, which they did in August 1961.

By then Khrushchev was more and more on the defensive; his bold gamble was failing; the missile gap was evaporating, the U.S. was mobilizing. He launched his disastrous adventure into Cuba, which contributed to his ultimate downfall.

Khrushchev's own justification for the Cuban adventure is revealing:

> "In addition to protecting Cuba, our missiles would have equalized what the West likes to call 'the balance of power'. The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missile pointing at you, we'd be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine."

The Soviets had failed in Cuba and therefore failed to force the recognition of their European security policy, but Khrushchev's successors could take some comfort that this step had probably become inevitable; what remained in doubt was the process and the final price.

- 15 -

It is probable that the seeds of the 1970 Eastern treaties were sown in 1961-62. If there was one man who was profoundly impressed by the limits of Western policy it was the Mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt. He said in December 1961 the crucial task for German foreign policy became "entering a new relationship with the Great Power in the East."

It is fairly clear that in the years that followed, Brandt and his associates devised an alternative Eastern policy occasionally spelled out in startling terms by Egon Bahr. The Christian Democrats, too, recognized that there had to be alternatives to the frontal assault on the German national question. The Soviets could not be forced or charmed out of East Germany; but some Germans apparently thought that they might be maneuvered out. The remnants of the Adenauer period were gradually but purposefully dismantled, the Hallstein doctrine being the most obvious. The road to Pankow seemed to lie through Bucharest, or so the theory ran.

Again we see the recurrence of the basic illusion; that if Soviet security interests could be satisfied in this way their claim to East Germany could be softened. One must ask: if in a period of major weakness when the West had an atomic monopoly and massive strategic advantages the Soviets maintained their German position, by what reasoning would they relinquish it as their strategic position improved in the 1960s, especially when their major adversary was entrapped in Southeast Asia?

The break between Brezhnev and Khrushchev was not as decisive as it appeared at the time, in 1964, when Khrushchev was removed from office. Both Brezhnev and Khrushchev were from roughly the same political generation, despite a difference in age. They came from the same political milieu, the Ukraine. They both intervened in East Europe, Khrushchev in 1956, Brezhnev in 1968. The difference was that Khrushchev did it pragmatically, and Brezhnev tried to apply a universal doctrine. They both were suspicious of and hostile to China. Khrushchev conducted an old-fashioned communist polemic in a struggle for the loyalty of party faithful; Brezhnev treated it as a struggle for power. They both pressed for a German settlement; Khrushchev through an ultimatum, and Brezhnev more subtly. They both were intrigued by an accommodation with the West and the United States; Khrushchev's peaceful coexistence was the necessary prerequisite for Brezhnev's detente. Both were impressed with military power and especially nuclear weaponry; Khrushchev thought it would translate automatically into political gains, Brezhnev recognized it was a slower, more complex process.

In many ways Brezhnev was ideally suited to pursue a policy of detente. He was a prudent, conservative political leader; he was drawn to practical solutions. He was the son of a steel worker, had been one himself, and had served as a soldier. He

- 16 -

was not an intellectual but rather was an activist who had the stamina and nerve to rise in Soviet politics during the 1930s and after the war. He had achieved high office in Stalin's time and even occupied a junior position on Stalin's last Politburo. After the war, he had administered the newly occupied former Romanian territories of Moldavia, not a position Stalin would assign to a civil libertarian. For a brief time he was commissar of the Soviet navy. His career had prospered under Khrushchev's patronage, but eventually he had turned on his patron and joined, or led, a conspiracy to remove him from power in 1964.

Brezhnev's own policies were carefully conservative in almost every sense. He ended Khrushchev's de-Stalinization and partially rehabilitated Stalin's reputation. He brushed aside the idea of major economic reforms but was a sporadic advocate of consumerism. He reassured the party bureaucrats by guaranteeing their tenure in office, and campaigned against dissidence of every stripe. Above all, he unleashed the industrial forces that would make the U.S.S.R. a nuclear superpower -- at an eventual cost to a vulnerable Soviet economy. And he continued a strong, unyielding anti-Chinese policy, much as Khrushchev had. But Brezhnev went even further: he added a massive buildup of Soviet military power along the border.

Detente with the United States appealed to Brezhnev for several reasons. He naturally wanted the respect of being treated as an equal of the United States. But this was largely psychological. More concretely, after the Czech crisis in 1968, he wanted a period of calm in Eastern and Western Europe, and to try to deal with China, preferably in alliance with the United States but unilaterally if necessary. He also wanted to achieve in Europe what had eluded both Stalin and Khrushchev -- a peace settlement, including recognition of the division of Germany. And, obviously, he wanted the material benefits of detente -- trade and assistance from the West. For this he was prepared to pay, though only in carefully arranged installments.

He was supported in this strategy by Andrei Gromyko, whose precise role was always somewhat puzzling. Gromyko, of course, had an awesome reputation. He had, after all, been foreign minister since 1957 (he was finally removed by Gorbachev in 1985 but was elevated to the ceremonial presidency). Over the years, Gromyko had become a thorough professional, highly competent and irritatingly painstaking in style. Gromyko and Brezhnev understood one thing clearly: that the Soviet system and Soviet society were poorly equipped for a flexible policy of international maneuvering. Thus, they tried to conduct a policy of slow advances and from well-prepared positions, and they were successful in doing so. This style was better suited to the conservative Brezhnev than to the freewheeling Khrushchev, but apparently was not at all tuned to the more

- 17 -

innovative Gorbachev (it is impossible to envision Gromyko at Reykjavik).

Detente did open a new era in relations between the superpowers, and marked the closing of an old one, reflected in the Berlin and German agreements of 1971-72. What was not settled in the 1972-73 heyday was how the superpowers would relate in Third World conflicts. Thus detente was still vulnerable to crisis outside the main arena of confrontation -- Central Europe.

Soviet-American relations were altered in the 1970s not by a better "understanding," or more contacts, but by a change in the raw balance of power in favor of a new anti-Soviet coalition. Soviet motives in pursuing detente, while related to their objectives in Central Europe and to the limitation of strategic arms, also reflected their concern that two separate fronts -- in Europe and in Asia -- were coalescing against the U.S.S.R. As a consequence, for the Soviets a U.S. willingness to drop the China option and take up a semi-alliance with Moscow gradually became a critical test of detente.

Brezhnev and Gromyko were preoccupied with the United States, and, given their wartime memories, ill-disposed toward Japan and Germany. But it was China that was the critical new element. Brezhnev claimed that the Chinese were obsessed with achieving world hegemony: when he visited the United States in June 1973, Brezhnev speculated that within ten years the Chinese would become a nuclear threat to both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

Whatever the importance of China as a factor, Soviet-American relations expanded. American policy required a long-term stabilization of the strategic nuclear balance, and an increasing Soviet acceptance of the status quo; but these requirements came at the very geopolitical moment when the Soviets were claiming and achieving a strategic equality that they believed entitled them to political gains in the conflict with the United States. It was this assessment that led to Angola, Ethiopia, and finally to Afghanistan.

## GORBACHEV -- REAGAN

The Afghan invasion brought the era of detente to an abrupt end. As the Reagan Administration took office the outlook for East-West relations was gloomy. There were major uncertainties as to what might follow. Many feared a new series of confrontations, a breakdown of arms control and an intensification of strategic arms competition. In the early 1980s American policy seemed geared to these expectations. It would have seemed a flight of fancy to predict 3-4 summit meetings and important arms control agreements.

Soviet policy, however, was increasingly constrained in this period. Moscow was generally passive in a series of regional crises, and was unable to block the deployment of American missiles in Europe. By late 1984, rather than confronting the Reagan Administration, Moscow was seeking to negotiate with it on arms control. It is worth recalling that this Soviet turnabout preceded Gorbachev. The major overtures to the Reagan administration in late 1984 were made by Chernenko and Gromyko; the resumption of the Geneva talks was negotiated under their auspices. It seems likely that these two holdovers were inclined to fall back on a conciliatory line rather than press a confrontationist policy. Thus Gorbachev inherited a situation that was improving, at least on the surface. And this is an important factor, since the popular version is that Reagan had no one to negotiate with, and that it was Gorbachev who took the initiative. It was the new Soviet leader, however, who exploited it vigorously, agreeing not only to the first get-acquainted summit in Geneva, but hustling for the second encounter at Reykjavik.

The beginning of the Gorbachev regime coincided with the high tide of the Reagan Administration. By 1984-85 much of the original Reagan defense program had been achieved. The Soviets had been brought back to the negotiating table under conditions favorable to the United States. The Administration could and did claim that it engaged in East-West diplomacy from a position of strength. In this light the Geneva summit of November 1985 was interpreted as a vindication of Administration policy.

***

Soviet policy has been relatively constrained during President Reagan's years in office -- in part because of the prolonged leadership crisis in the Kremlin. Almost four years passed between the final year of Brezhnev's tenure and

2

Gorbachev's accession to office in March 1985. This period was also marked by crises for Moscow: in Afghanistan the war escalated, and in Poland the very essence of communist power -- the party's supremacy -- was severely challenged. Soviet economic troubles worsened, and Soviet society was suffering from a widespread malaise, as Gorbachev now acknowledges.

This combination of factors led to an assumption in the West that Gorbachev would pursue a conciliatory foreign policy to gain time to concentrate on his internal problems. After taking office he suggested as much himself in various public statements and interviews, with *Time* for example. The reorganization of his foreign policy/national security apparatus bringing in Shevardnadze, Dobrynin and Yakovlev, also suggested that he would conduct a more sophisticated policy. A new flexibility seemed confirmed by a loosening of several Soviet positions toward China, Japan, Western Europe, Israel, and, eventually, the United States. Much of the change was stylistic. But some observers detected in the "new thinking" the seeds of more significant changes, especially regarding the nature of East-West security and the extent of Soviet involvement in the Third World.

Gorbachev adopted a basically defensive strategy, rather than the aggressive one feared in 1980, but his tactics include a number of interesting innovations and initiatives that conceal the Soviet Union's basic weakness. His main effort is to reduce the "encirclement" of the Soviet Union by developing openings to the regions on its periphery, especially China and Japan and also in the Persian Gulf. Unlike his predecessors, he is apparently prepared to make some concessions to gain a better position, including a withdrawal of some Soviet troops along the Chinese border, possibly a settlement with Japan of the Kuriles, and arranging an end to the Iranian war.

More fundamentally, Gorbachev has apparently concluded that the quest for genuine strategic superiority over the United States is futile and, consequently, he appears ready to settle for a prolonged strategic stalemate. But in the process he must be able to guarantee that the United States accepts the same premises; and this leads him to arms control agreements as a means for codifying his assumptions about security and the nuclear relationship. Of course Gorbachev also assumes that in the process of working out a new superpower relationship he can cause or encourage the retraction of the American presence in Europe, and perhaps in Asia as well. Here, too, he has offered concessions (e.g., the zero option) to encourage a political environment for further advances.

Gorbachev seems more prudent in the risks and responsibilities he will undertake in the Third World. This reflects a new and more modest evaluation of the prospects for the Soviet Union. It also suggests that Gorbachev does not

3

accept Khrushchev's proposition that the contest with the West
can be decided in the Third World. Indeed, he apparently
believes the effort to gain a clear victory there is too
burdensome for the potential gains, and too risky given the
uncertainties of these countries and areas.

Gorbachev seems to recognize that the Soviet Union's global
position has weakened over the last decade. The Soviet state
is now forced to play the role of a more conventional world
power. It no longer leads a revolution, it no longer offers
ideological inspiration to the world, it no longer poses as the
model for economic development.

Moscow is still the master of an East European empire, but
another of those empires that is decaying from the virus of
diversity and democracy. Champions of a universalist doctrine
are poor imperialists -- precisely because empires tend to find
them wanting. The British had the wit to devise the
Commonwealth; the Soviets have only the threat of
intervention. The rise of Solidarity in Poland was a watershed
for the Soviet empire; its further decline is only a matter of
time. In this sense the lands behind the old Iron Curtain have
become the new Sick Man of Europe, where the danger of a future
war may be greatest.

It is possible to see in Gorbachev nothing more than shifts
in tactics. It can even be argued that the wily old Gromyko
would have arrived at similar conclusions about the position of
the Soviet Union, but without resorting to Gorbachev's novel
rhetoric. An alternatvie view is that Gorbachev views foreign
policy in much the same way he sees his domestic situation.
That is, he still believes in the basic system but recognizes
that radical changes are in order, and that this will involve
paying a price in the near term to achieve longer-term aims.
Thus he is introducing innovative elements into current Soviet
foreign policies which are beginning to outweigh the elements
of continuity.

In sum, the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev to the
leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union marks the
beginning of a new historical period. The transition from
Brezhnev to Gorbachev is a genuine generational change, unlike
the transfer of power from Khrushchev to Brezhnev in 1964.
Gorbachev is the first post-revolutionary Soviet leader; he was
born 14 years after the October Revolution. Indeed, he is a
postwar leader -- he was only ten at the time of Hitler's
invasion. But as the product and inheritor of a huge
bureaucratic system, Gorbachev's freedom of action is limited.
The Soviet system can be reformed, but not drastically or
quickly. Yet the domestic crisis in the Soviet Union cries out
for just that -- radical and urgent change.

This is Gorbachev's dilemma. His only hope of pulling the

Soviet Union out of the stagnation of the Brezhnev era is to strike hard at the system and continue the pressures for change. This produces opposition at all levels, even in the Politburo, and thus Gorbachev's strategy puts his political survival at risk. He has even acknowledged this, but he will probably persist with his reform program. At some point, say within the next two to four years, he will probably face an internal crisis. If he prevails, he may well change the Soviet Union profoundly; if he fails, he may lose power. If he senses that he is failing and struggles to survive, it could be a dangerous period for the United States, as the temptation to compensate for internal failures with foreign adventures may prove irresistible.

The Soviet Union will not simply acquiesce in the disintegration of its world power position. Gorbachev was not enthroned to preside over the dismantling of the Soviet empire. Quite the contrary: many observers already detect a revival of Russian nationalism, which also poses dangers for the states on the periphery of the Soviet state. A nationalist policy might seek greater influence, even physical domination.

Even though the global position of the Soviet Union has weakened, a revival under Gorbachev is quite possible, albeit probably not in the near term. In any case, Gorbachev will give priority to domestic policy; his clear preference is to buy some time in foreign policy. Thus the overall combination of circumstances suggests that it is a time of unusual opportunity for American policy.

***

Gorbachev represents a force for change in the Soviet Union. It remains to be seen the extent to which he will introduce changes in foreign policy. But with or without Gorbachev, the struggle between the two superpowers has also been changing.

1. In their nuclear relationship, both powers seem to have arrived at roughly the same conclusion: that achieving a clear offensive nuclear superiority is no longer feasible. Neither side will acquiesce in such a shift in the balance, as the past 20 years have demonstrated. This explains why Reagan and Gorbachev could agree that "nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought," the epigram accepted in the Geneva summit communiqué. While it is easy to dismiss the statement as mere rhetoric, it does represent a shift from a decade or so ago, when Soviet doctrine allowed for "victory" in nuclear war. Moreover, in other respects the Soviets have been gradually de-emphasizing nuclear forces in favor of a new buildup of conventional forces. This too remains to be seen. But there is

5

a growing body of evidence in Soviet military writing, that the conventional arms will be given much greater priority over nuclear weaponry. And indeed, this may explain why the Soviets were able and even eager to accept the zero option.

2. The geopolitical conflict has also changed. The global balance of forces works against the Soviet Union. The collapse of the Sino-Soviet alliance and the growth of Sino-American ties have fundamentally altered the strategic position of the Soviet Union. All of the major powers are aligned against the U.S.S.R. Moscow is confronted by the probability of a two- or three-front war. Most strategists believe that a Soviet-American war as a consequence of a deliberate choice is now only a marginal possibility. But war through inadvertence is still possible.

3. There is little left of the ideological contest of earlier decades. The conflict has increasingly taken on the character of a struggle for power and influence along more traditional lines. Ideological conflicts brook no compromises, but power and interests are negotiable commodities: they can be limited in mutually acceptable ways. This is the essence of international politics. The change from an ideological struggle to a conflict of interests explains much about the recent history of Soviet-American relations and why clashes can arise, even in sensitive areas, without automatically producing an East-West confrontation.

Under the Reagan Doctrine, Washington has revived a policy of selective containment at the very time when the U.S.S.R. may be adopting a policy of selective commitment. We have won the ideological war; we are close to winning the geopolitical contest in the Third World, except for the Middle East. We long ago won the economic competition. And therein may lie the chance for some moderation of the contest.

4. Yet there remains a nearly irresistible strain of isolationism in America. This is reflected in the continuing temptation in the United States to alter the Atlantic alliance and withdraw from Europe. There is nothing more encouraging to the Soviet leaders in their time of troubles than the hope that sooner or later the United States will disengage from Western Europe. The struggle for the mastery of Europe, to paraphrase the British historian A.J.P. Taylor, continues, and will continue as long as the Soviet Union remains one of Europe's great powers. The balance of world power could still be changed by shifts in this vital area.

Maintaining an anti-Soviet coalition has become more complicated by our tentative alliance with China; the natural course for Sino-American relations would be to move toward a closer military relationship. But we have limited mutual interests with China (whether that country "modernizes" or not)

6

beyond the common opposition to Moscow; and the Sino-Soviet relationship will undoubtedly be subject to fluctuations as both the Soviets and Chinese try to moderate their strategic differences. The new generation of Soviet leaders will seek greater flexibility in Sino-Soviet relations. And sooner or later there will be a new generation in power in Beijing that will not have experienced the clashes with Moscow of the 1960s and 1970s. All of this, in turn, will be unsettling for Washington.

5. There is still the potential for sharp and dangerous East-West conflicts, but such clashes seem less likely than in earlier decades. During a particularly bad period of superpower relations, 1980-85, both sides nevertheless avoided turning a number of regional conflicts and small wars into a confrontation. The United States put small military contingents into Lebanon twice without a Soviet reaction. The United States invaded Grenada and bombed Libya without even a hint of a clash between the United States and the Soviet Union. The British navy sailed unobstructed to fight in the Falklands. Iran and Iraq are fighting a seemingly endless war, and the United States and the Soviet Union have both supported Iraq. Some analysts have concluded that the superpower rivalry is, in fact, moderating.

6. There is some evidence that the Soviets have become dissatisfied with the burden of their imperial missions. They seem to be disenchanted with their weaker clients in the Third World and reluctant to undertake new commitments (e.g., in Libya). This trend also antedates Gorbachev; it seems to have originated under Andropov, who questioned the value of many of the Soviet Union's clients. This attitude could be explained by the Soviet Union's recognition of its unfavorable economic circumstances, but it could also reflect a conclusion in Moscow that a period of consolidation is required before new advances.

A more fundamental change may be involved. Soviet behavior may reflect a basic post-Brezhnev reassessment of policy toward the Third World that has resulted in a more wary approach; one that is more sensitive to the impact of Soviet behavior on the central relationship with the United States.

7. One further difference under Gorbachev may be the reduced interest in acquiring western credits and technology. Gorbachev obviously wants it, but thus far has not conducted a campaign, and most important has not brought it prominently into the U.S-Soviet dialogue. One conclusion is that he is far more interested in maintaining a position of self-reliance than making himself vulnerable as Brezhnev did at the time of the Carter embargo.

8. No grand settlements are likely at this stage. But for the first time since the era of détente, the two superpowers

7

seem to be carefully testing the possibility of a new relationship, largely because each power suffers from increasing domestic difficulties. It could turn out to be only an interlude before another serious clash -- perhaps in the Persian Gulf. But it could also herald the beginning of a slow process of defining less ambitious objectives, and even setting some mutual rules of behavior.

Thus we are probably entering the fourth major period in which some progress toward settling our rivalry with the Soviet Union is possible. Since World War II there have been three moments for such progress: after Stalin died in 1953, after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and during the 1969-1972 period of détente. Each period yielded some progress, and consequently the conflict has become less volatile. But each period ended in failure. It is this inability to stabilize the relationship that is dangerous and that challenges the current American and Soviet leaderships.

***

For American policy, Gorbachev is a complicating factor. There is a strong temptation in the United States to "help" him because he presents himself as a liberal reformer -- which in fact he may well be. Moreover, a good case can be made, as Andrei Sakharov does, that Gorbachev may be the last best hope, lest a far more ruthless regime take over. But this cannot be a basis for Western policy. Gorbachev may be in power for a month, or for decades. He may abandon his reforms and become another Brezhnev, or like Khrushchev challenge the West dangerously as his domestic position weakens.

What the West needs to survive these potential twists and turns is a general strategy that recognizes that there indeed are domestic changes under way in the Soviet Union, but tempers that recognition with a hardheaded assertion of Western security requirements. We should help Gorbachev only if we thereby help ourselves.

American policymakers cannot risk waiting for history to transform the conflict with the Soviet Union. In the nuclear era the United States must make some progress toward a settlement, even if only a partial one. This means a greater reliance on politics and diplomacy, and diplomacy that goes beyond the prevailing obsession with arms control.

**Arms control** has had a checkered history. Agreements that seemed important have turned out to be ephemeral or misleading, and there have been some deep disillusionments. But time and again the idea of limiting or otherwise controlling nuclear weapons has returned to the forefront of East-West relations.

8

This is not accidental; it simply reflects the imperatives of
the nuclear era. Some American administrations have made arms
control a centerpiece, others have become engaged more
reluctantly. But a pattern seems to have been fixed: East-West
relations start with the control of strategic and nuclear arms.

It was certainly not the aim of the Reagan Administration
on taking office in 1981 to return arms control to the focal
point of East-West relations. At that time the prevailing
attitude was that arms control negotiations held little promise
unless and until American power had been rebuilt and Soviet
behavior had changed. Even though Washington was pressured by
its European allies into early negotiations on theater nuclear
forces in November 1981, the course of events seemed to bear
out Washington's basic pessimism.

The Soviets withdrew from the arms negotiations in 1983,
and for over a year after there were no official or formal
talks on strategic arms control -- a first since such
negotiations began in November 1969. In retrospect, however,
it was more significant that during this interlude both sides
maintained some contact and abided by the constraints of the
unratified Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) agreements
and the nuclear threshold test ban. In June 1984 the
Administration accepted -- to Moscow's surprise -- a Soviet
proposal to begin talks on preventing the militarization of
space; this shrewd tactic undercut the Soviet charge that the
United States was responsible for the absence of negotiations,
and the Soviets then wriggled out of their own offer. In July
the two sides agreed to upgrade the "hot line" between Moscow
and Washington. Near the end of the 1984 election campaign the
Soviets ostentatiously resumed discussions with the White House
in a meeting between Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and the
president. Shortly after the elections, the United States and
the Soviet Union announced a new round of arms control
negotiations.

One reason for this turn was that the United States and its
allies had scored a major political triumph with the initial
deployment of American missiles in Europe during 1983-84,
without splitting the Atlantic alliance. The Soviet Union's
failure to stop that deployment was a major setback. The
Soviet walkout from Geneva in late 1983 had failed, and new
tactics were called for.

In the negotiations that led to the formal resumption of
arms control talks in 1985, however, it was the future of
President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative that occupied
the attention of the two powers. The tortured communique that
announced the new talks referred to stopping an arms race on
earth and preventing one in outer space. The new talks had
three parts: strategic offense, strategic defense and
intermediate-range weapons. For the first time since 1972 the

9

two sides accepted a formal link between offense and defense.

Many observers -- including in the White House -- concluded that it was SDI that had brought the Soviets back to the bargaining table. This in turn led to the view that SDI was the ultimate bargaining chip, which could ensure the success of strategic arms control. Gradually there emerged what came to be called the "grand compromise": the United States would virtually abandon or significantly restrict SDI in return for a substantial reduction of Soviet offensive forces.

During 1986 the Soviets suggested a separate agreement on INF, not conditioned on an agreement on longer-range offensive forces or SDI. The Soviets also finally dropped their insistence on including forward-based U.S. aircraft, and then dropped their proposal to freeze British and French nuclear systems. Shortly before Reykjavik there was widespread speculation that there would be an INF agreement, including the complete elimination of intermediate-range missiles in Europe, while leaving some number of Soviet missiles in Asia and an equivalent number inside the continental United States. The American delegation approached Reykjavik anticipating this outcome.

The debacle at Reykjavik need not be rehearsed again. It is obvious that the more utopian elements discussed there have been put aside. There will be no agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons or to eliminate all ballistic missiles. What remains, however, is the outline of a three-part agreement: (1) a major reduction (about 50 percent) of strategic offensive weapons; (2) an agreement not to withdraw from the ABM treaty or to deploy SDI for some defined period (say, ten years) and (3) a separate agreement eliminating all American and Soviet land-based intermediate-range missiles (the so-called zero option signed at the White House on December 8, 1987).

This, then, is the "grand compromise" that has been at issue for the last several years. Even if such a framework is agreed upon, the United States and the Soviet Union will continue for at least a decade to operate within the mainstream of arms control and strategic policies that have characterized their relationship since the late 1960s. Both sides will retain large strategic offensive forces, even after reductions of 50 percent. Deterrence will still rest on the certainty of retaliation, and there will be no significant defense against strategic attacks. Hence the populations and military targets of both sides will be vulnerable. Significant imbalances in conventional forces will remain in Europe, but there will be a new debate about America's nuclear guarantee of NATO and how to implement it.

Reducing or even eliminating a category of weapons cannot in itself be the basis for a durable strategic relationship.

10

An arms control agreement must meet the broad criteria of long-term strategic stability -- a formidable task if only because there is no agreement, either in the United States or between the United States and the Soviet Union, on what constitutes stability. It has become far more difficult in light of the revival of strategic defense: creating a durable balance between offense and defense is the very essence of stability.

Even if there are agreements arising from the Reagan-Gorbachev summits, major policy questions remain to be addressed by President Reagan's successor. Is it credible for the United States to continue to rely indefinitely on the threat of strategic retaliation to maintain deterrence, even at severely reduced levels of strategic forces? A more immediate question in light of possible agreements on INF concerns the viability of extended deterrence in Europe after the elimination of all American missiles from Europe. Finally, and most critically, have we reached the point that some form of strategic defense is necessary, for strategic, political or psychological reasons? If so, is a new offensive-defensive balance possible and desirable in the 1990s? Can it be stable? What would be its content?

The Reagan-Gorbachev summits have centered on arms control, and thereby confirm the decline of "linkage," of making arms control negotiations or agreements dependent in some degree on progress on political issues, for example, on progress toward an agreement on Afghanistan or Nicaragua, or even the Persian Gulf. This decline in linkage was probably inevitable: as the size and sophistication of nuclear arsenals has grown, intricate Kissingerian strategies of linkage have carried less and less conviction. President Ford did not really link arms control and geopolitical issues despite the Soviet-Cuban intervention in Angola. President Carter invoked linkage only after the invasion of Afghanistan, and Reagan formally abandoned it when he continued arms control talks after the imposition of martial law in Poland; no serious attempt was made to revive it when confronted by summit meetings.

The decoupling of arms control from geopolitical issues is bound to limit American policy, perhaps in a dangerous way. For it remains clear that the chief threats to Soviet-American relations are not only nuclear weapons but regional conflicts as well. The invasion of Afghanistan should have demonstrated the dangers of delinking arms control: President Carter had no choice but to withdraw SALT II after the invasion.

It is also true, however, that it will be difficult to tie arms control to other issues. It takes the power and authority of a strong president to insist on parallel progress on contentious political issues and to resist the pressures to settle for partial agreements. If this trend toward separate

11

arms control agreements is not arrested, new and potentially serious disputes in Soviet-American relations are inevitable.

Whether in arms control or regional negotiations, a serious American diplomacy will finally have to decide how to define and deal with legitimate Soviet interests, and how to gain public support for a policy that inevitably involves some American concessions to these interests. Does the Soviet Union have a right to strategic parity, or is this too dangerous a state of affairs for the United States? What is the legitimate security interest of the Soviet Union in the areas on its periphery: in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, China? Does it have an implicit right of intervention in its sphere of influence? If so, does it include intervention with armed forces? Can the United States tolerate such a permanent threat to peace? What of the link between the nature of the internal Soviet regime, which will never be acceptable to the United States, and the content of Soviet foreign policy? Can the two be separated?

These are not academic questions. They remain at the heart of Soviet-American relations.

A viable Soviet-American relationship demands agreements, or at least some process to control nuclear arms and seek resolution of some regional conflicts. The effort to achieve these two aims is bound to be protracted, and will involve reconciling contradictions and finely tuning tactics and strategy. An American policy that requires such a consistent and careful management in a democratic society is not doomed to fail, but it is extraordinarily difficult to carry out. Above all, it will have to command the depth of public support necessary to sustain the policy when challenged in the next crisis.

***

Where does Gorbachev fit in the grand scheme of Russian and Soviet policies?

Thus far his most distinguishing characteristic is as an internal reformer. He is by no means the first reformer. Nor is he even the most ambitious; after all, freeing the serfs was a monumental undertaking with far reaching economic and social consequences. It was stimulated by and accomplished in the wake of serious foreign setback in the Crimea. It transformed Russia from a semi-feudal state into an early stage of industrial capitalism.

Regardless of the reforms, Alexander II was not immune to the lure of empire and expansion, nor was he particularly liberal when it came to foreign policy. It was under his reign

12

that Russia expanded steadily in Central Asia, suppressed the Poles, and finally became involved in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877. It is also true that reform in Russia encouraged demands throughout the empire, in Poland and Finland, and encouraged revolutionary movements that finally led to the Czar's assassination. So the link between internal reform and a correspondingly conciliatory policy abroad is not guaranteed by history.

A more appropriate example, and one cited by Soviet officials is the NEP of Lenin (and Bukharin). But this was a necessity imposed on a gravely weakened state, that considered its very survival at stake. The current invocations of the NEP are more a matter of politics than real parallels.

Khrushchev was also a reformer, and was in the process of restructuring the Soviet party, splitting it into two contending parts -- industrial and agricultural -- at the same time that he was engaged in the Berlin crisis and the Cuban confrontation. Kosygin's proposed reforms in 1964-65 are quite similar to Gorbachev's ideas; indeed, some of the same men are involved. But Kosygin's reforms simply faded away in the face of Brezhnev's opposition. There is no evidence, moreover, that Kosygin was dovish in foreign policy, though this cannot be known with certainty.

Nor is Gorbachev the first to make major adjustments in foreign policy in a succession period. Stalin's successors shifted from his narrow view of the world to a far more encompassing perspective. The spirits of Geneva and Camp David, as well as 'peaceful coexistence' were, in their time, thought of as harbingers of a more fundamental change. We now know that for the first four years until 1957 there was vicious infighting over foreign policy between Khrushchev and Molotov.

The post-Khrushchev succession was less volatile. Talk of reform and change did stimulate the Prague Spring, and the Soviet intervention in 1968. But there was also the NPT, and some movement in the direction of the U.S.

If there is a broad generalization, it may be that succession periods bred turmoil by the very nature of the authoritarian system, and that the turmoil increases if the successor is a reformer. The requirements of maintaining the system in power, however, eventually raises the question of how to maintain discipline and the preeminence of the party, and this opens the way sooner or later to a retrogression in the name of order (e.g., Brezhnev vs. Khrushchev). If and when this moment occurs, foreign policy could easily be affected, since a foreign policy justified in the name of internal calm is no longer necessary or even desirable.

In sum, there are ample precedents for Gorbachev.

FEB.22 '88 10:27 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.02

# US-SOVIET STRATEGIC ARMS NEGOTIATIONS (START)
## STATUS AND EFFECT ON FORCE COMPOSITION

## CURRENT STATUS

### AGREED POSITIONS

- Mutual reductions to 6000 warheads

- 1600 SNDV (not really limiting)

- Each air launched cruise missile (ALCM) counts as one warhead

- Bombers without cruise missiles count as one warhead

- Cut in SS-18 warheads to 1650 on 154 missiles (50%)

- Maximum of 4900 warheads on ballistic missiles

- Approximate 50% cut in Soviet (only) missiles throwweight

- Ceiling on SLCM's (undefined). SLCM not to be included in 6000/1600 ceiling

### US PROPOSALS

- Maximum of 4800 warheads on ballistic missiles

- 50% cut in Soviet (only) missile throwweight

- Ban on mobile ICBM's

- Additional missile sublimits

- Maximum of 3300 warheads on ICBM's

- Limit of 1650 warheads on total of SS-18 and SS-24 missiles

88-54 missiles
-Limit of 1620 warheads on total of 88-18 and

-Maximum of 3300 warheads on ICBM's

-Additional missile limits

-Ban on mobile ICBM's

-20# cut in Soviet (only) missile throwweight

-Maximum of 4800 warheads on ballistic missiles

## UB PROPOSALS

inflated in 8000/1600 ceiling

-Ceiling on ALCM's (unlimited). ALCM not so pe

throwweight

-Approximate 20# cut in Soviet (only) missiles

-Cut in 88-18 warheads to 1620 on 124 missiles (20#)

-Bombers without cruise missiles count as one warhead

one warhead

-Each atr launched cruise missile (ALCM) counts as

-1600 BMDA (not really limiting)

-Mutual reductions to 6000 warheads

## AGREED POSITIONS

## CURRENT STATUS

## STATUS AND REFLECT ON FORCE COMBINATION

## US-SOVIET STRATEGIC ARMS NEGOTIATIONS (START)

FEB 25 '88 10:57 KISSIMER ASSOCIATES, MARCH 00

P.05

FEB.22 '88 10:28 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.03

- 2 -

SOVIET PROPOSALS

- Maximum of 5100 warheads on ballistic missiles

- No more than 60% of the 6000 permitted warheads on any one leg of the Triad

- Opposed to additional sublimits, but if they are to be imposed, they should be set at

  - 1800-2000 limit on SLBM's

  - 800-900 limit on ALCM's

  - Nuclear sea launched cruise missiles (SLCM) banned on surface ships; limit of 400 on submarines

- Nuclear sea launched cruise missiles (SICM) banned
on surface ships: limit of 400 on submarines

-800-900 limit on ALCM's

-1800-5000 limit on SIBM's

be imposed, they should be set at
-Obposed to additional amplitudes, but if they are to

one fed of the Triad

-No more than 60# of the 8000 permitted warheads on any

-Maximum of 2100 warheads on ballistic missiles

## SOVIET PROPOSALS

FEB.22 '88 10:29 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.04

- 3 -

NOTIONAL IMPACT OF START REDUCTIONS ON FORCE STRUCTURE

(assuming a compromise resolution of missile sublimit issue at
roughly 3600 ICBM and 3600 SLBM)

US FORCE STRUCTURE

<table><thead><tr><th>ICBM</th><th></th><th>SLBM</th><th></th><th>BOMBER**</th></tr><tr><th></th><th></th><th>Trident Boats*</th><th>Warheads</th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>MX</td><td>500</td><td></td><td></td><td>B-1 100</td></tr><tr><td>MMIII</td><td>942</td><td></td><td></td><td>B-52 1000</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>1442</td><td>D-5 (8 warheads)</td><td>18 3456</td><td>Total 1100</td></tr></tbody></table>

*Warhead count on D-5 agreed in Summit communique.

**Assumes each B-52 armed with ALCM and B-1 without cruise missiles. (Actual ALCM/bomber loading rules not yet agreed.)

SOVIET FORCE STRUCTURE

<table><thead><tr><th>ICBM</th><th></th><th>SLBM</th><th></th><th>BOMBERS**</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>SS-18</td><td>1650</td><td>Typhoon Boats</td><td></td><td>Bison 20</td></tr><tr><td>SS-24</td><td>1250</td><td>SSN-20*(10 warheads)</td><td>7 1400</td><td>Bear 560</td></tr><tr><td>SS-25</td><td>500</td><td></td><td></td><td>Blackjack</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>3400</td><td>Delta IV Boats***</td><td></td><td>Total 1100</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td>SSN-23* (10 warheads)</td><td>21 1344</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

*Warhead count on SSN-20 and SSN-23 agreed in summit communique

**Blackjack is now being tested; Bear is once again in production. Since 1100 warheads are agreed reserved for bombers, it can be assumed Soviets will deploy that number.

***Unclear how Soviets will allocate SLBM force among Typhoon, Delta IV, SSN-20 and SSN-23.

Delta IV, 88N-50 and 88N-53.

**Unclear how Boarda will allocate STBM force amount Typhoon,

it can be assumed Boarda will deploy that number.

**Blackjack is now being treated! Bear is once again in biocon-
tion. Since 1100 warheads are agreed reserved for pompera,

*Warhead connt on 88N-50 and 88N-53 agreed in ammit communique

88N-53* (10 warheads) 31 1344
Total 3400 Delta IV Boats***
88-52 200
Blackjack
88-34 1320
88-18 1620
Typhoon Boats
Warheads
Biaou
50
BOMBER**
ICBM

88N-50*(10 warheads) 7 1400 Bear 280
BOMBER**
ICBM

## BOATET PORCE STRUCTURE

messiles. (Actual VLCM/pomper loading rules not yet agreed.)
**Yeaumea each B-25 armed with VLCM and B-1 without cruise

*Warhead connt on D-2 agreed in ammit communique.

| | | | |
|:---|:---|:---|:---|
| **Total 1443** | D-2 (8 warheads) 18 | 3426 | Total 1100 |
| **MMIII 345** | | B-25 1000 | |
| **MX 200** | | B-1 100 | |

ICBM
***BOMBER***

## NB PORCE STRUCTURE

roundly 3600 ICBM and 3600 STBM)
(seeamning & combrowtate resolution of missile enplicit jeneve at
**MOTIONAL IMPACT OF START REDUCTIONS ON PORCE STRUCTURE**

- 3 -

FEB.55 .88 10:53 K128INGER P320C11E3: MAH. DC

F.04

FEB.22 '88 10:30 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.05

- 4 -

EFFECT OF NOTIONAL START REDUCTIONS ON RATIO OF HARD
TARGET KILLERS TO SILO TARGETS

SOVIET FORCES

| | US SILOS | SS-18 WARHEADS* | RATIO |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Current situation | 1000 | 3080 | 3.08/1 |
| Post START | 364) | 1650 | 4.53/1 |

*This calculation omits whatever change in Soviet capability would
come with the replacement of SS-17 and SS-19 (limited HTKC) by SS-24
and SS-25 (presumably enhanced HTKC) and whether or not the SS-24 is
included in the sublimit on heavy ICBM's.

US FORCES

| | SOVIET SILOS | US HTKC* | RATIO |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Current situation | 1326** | 2000 | 1.5 1/1 |
| Post START | 279*** | 1442 | 5.17/1*** |

*MMIII assumed to have HTKC (dubious, especially against super hardened silos)

**Does not include 72 mobile SS-25, assumed untargetable.

***Assumes SS-24 in silos and does not include 500 mobile SS-25.
If SS-25 is added to the target base, the ratio goes to 1.85/1.

If BB-32 is added to the target pass, the ratio does to 1.82/1.
***Assumes BB-34 in elos and does not include 200 modife BB-32.

**Does not include 15 modife BB-32, assumed untargetable.

Hardened elos)

*MMIII assumed to have HKC (dronpns, especially against under

| | | | |
|:---|:---|:---|:---|
| **Post START** | **SOVIET BILS** | **UB HKC*** | **RATIO** |
| Current situation | 519*** | 1445 | 2.11/1*** |
| | 1356** | 2000 | 1.2 1/1 |

UB FORCES

SOVIET FORCES

| | | | |
|:---|:---|:---|:---|
| **Post START** | **UB BILS** | **UB HKC*** | **RATIO** |
| Current situation | 364) | 1620 | 4.23/1 |
| | 1000 | 3080 | 3.08/1 |

TARGET KITERS TO SIFO TARGETS

EFFECT OF NOTIONAL START REDUCTIONS ON RATIO OK HRD

- 4 -

FEB.55 .68 10:30 K122INGER 8280CIRTER2: INCH' DC

MAR.23 '97 14:33 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

HOW TO THINK ABOUT INF ARMS CONTROL

JOHN DEUTCH, BRENT SCOWCROFT, R. JAMES WOOLSEY

The Administration appears to be moving rapidly to respond positively to General Secretary Gorbachev's offer to separate negotiations on intermediate nuclear forces (INF) from those on strategic offensive and defensive weapons. This makes tactical sense, to take advantage of Gorbachev's apparent desire--or need--for progress to show movement in arms control. It may also be in the Administration's political interest to help take Iran and the contras off the front page and to demonstrate that the President's recent political wounds have not impaired his ability to function.

But what of the substance of the INF proposal itself? While the notion of reducing to zero intermediate range weapons in Europe on both sides, with each allowed 100 warheads respectively in Soviet Asia and the United States, is in its genealogy a US idea, it nonetheless has a number of troubling aspects. The idea of eliminating an entire class of nuclear weapons in Europe is at least superficially attractive but more serious examination of its implications reavelas a very different picture.

What is the nature of its shortcomings? Even assuming that the Administration pursues successfully its current vigorous efforts to insure adequate verification, there will remain at least three areas where the proposal fails to serve US or NATO interests.

MAR.23 '87 14:34 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.03

The first problem is at the purely military level. Removing the US Pershing II and cruise missiles would leave the USSR with 500-700 shorter range missiles--many deployed or at least moved to Eastern Europe ostensibly in response to the NATO INF deployment--virtually unopposed. Their withdrawal from Czechoslovakia and East Germany, as Gorbachev has proposed, could be reversed in a crisis in a matter of hours. Not only would this accentuate the nuclear imbalance in Europe, but since NATO's nuclear weapons were deployed in Europe principally to compensate for NATO conventional inferiority, the removal of the INF force would underscore NATO conventional weakness as well.

The zero option also raises problems in the area of strategy. NATO strategy is based on the concept of flexible response, the ability to respond to a Soviet attack in whatever manner appears most appropriate and to be able to escalate to whatever degree necessary to convince Warsaw Pact that continued aggression would not be profitable. Removal of the INF force leaves a large gap in the capability for flexible response. While the gap can be filled in part by tactical aircraft based in Europe able to deliver either nuclear or conventional weapons, but those aircraft are also desperately at the conventional level. In addition, the proposal would be a significant step toward denuclearizing Europe, a long time Soviet objective. Such an eventual step would wholly undercut NATO strategy, leaving no counter to Soviet conventional superiority except the use of US strategic nuclear forces.

MAR.23 '87 14:35 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

- 3 -

P.04

A third difficulty created by the zero option is in the political arena. The deployment of Pershings and cruise missiles after 1983 was not simply to counter the SS-20--which it does not--but principally to reassure the Europeans that the United States was irrevocably linked to the defense of Europe with whatever forces were required to make a Soviet attack unprofitable. The European governments, with considerable political courage, asked for and supported this deployment. Are they to tell their people that the sacrifice they called for such a short time ago is no longer needed? If the deployment was at its heart a political move strengthening the strategic ties between the two sides of the Alliance, how can its reversal be seen as anything but a weakening of that linkage?

In sum, the proposal in its original form appears clearly to be fatally flawed. It is true that the United States first proposed the "zero option" in 1981. But having made that error, basically on grounds that the Soviets would never accept it, is no justification for persisting in it when its realization seems possible.

What can be done? A relatively simple adjustment which would avoid or mitigate most of the worst aspects of the zero option would be to reduce the INF forces to 100 or so warheads

MAR.23 '87 14:36 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.05

- 4 -

on each side rather than zero. Such a proposal could be
accompanied by an agreed intention in principle eventually to
move to zero. This less dramatic reduction would reassure the
Europeans, leave NATO strategy intact, provide an opportunity
to test the verification measures in practice and allow time
for negotiations to deal with Soviet shorter range missiles
while we still retained some negotiating leverage.

If the Administration has become fixated on zero INF for Europe, however, there are other alternatives. One possibility would be for the United States to develop and deploy a counter to the Soviet short range nuclear systems, although the political prospects for such a move, both in the United States and in Europe, currently appear bleak. Another possibility would be to refocus sufficient SDI funds to push the development of an anti-tactical ballistic missile ATBM system. This would be a desirable move quite apart from an INF arms control agreement. It could add much needed survivability to US INF forces and, properly done, it could be fully accomplished without running afoul of the ABM Treaty.

Still another approach, at least in theory, would be a
believable commitment to a significant improvement of NATO's
conventional capability. General Rogers has outlined a way to
do this which is certainly not outside the capability of the
Alliance members. But the Alliance has failed for 35 years to
provide an adequate conventional capability and current circum-
stances do not appear particularly propitious for a change in

MAR.23 '87 14:37 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.06

- 5 -

One ancillary consideration is that the US decision to exceed the numerical limits of SALT II has exposed the potential for another vulnerability an INF agreement against which steps should be taken. The SS-20 is basically the upper two stages of the SS-16, a mobile ICBM banned by SALT II. Unless contrary provision are negotiated, there would be nothing to prevent the USSR from turning the eliminated SS-20's back into SS-16's.

The President has for years resisted the blandishments of those who would seek arms control agreements for their own sake. He has "hung tough" and the Soviets have now come to us. Good. Why now, then, would we wish to throw this leverage away on an agreement which, without significant modificatin, is not in the US national interest. There is still time, but only if we recognize what it is we are in danger of doing to ourselves.

0110g

JONES, DAY, REAVIS & POGUE

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