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An American Posture for the 1990s
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14406 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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6 / 1988 |
3,915 Words |
| Author
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Jerry Hough
Jerry Hough is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
and professor of political science at Duke University. |
Nothing is more difficult than to prescribe an intelligent foreign policy for the future. Any simple-minded policy--whether "hard-line" or "soft-line"--is simply counterproductive, while words like "détente" are so vague that they have little concrete content. Similarly, to call for a combination of "cooperation and competition" is to use another meaningless cliché. Even the early Reagan administration still cooperated with the Soviet Union in such traditional areas as the allocation of broadcasting frequencies, the definition of fishing rights, and the establishment of safety rules at sea.
The crucial concrete question is: when and how should we cooperate? when and how should we compete? It is not easy to be specific beforehand, for the answer varies with the situation and with the stage in negotiations. We must begin with a clear sense of what we want to achieve or, rather, what we want to achieve that we can achieve. The Reagan administration has been right in insisting that its hard-line approach sometimes induces more meaningful concessions from the Soviet Union and even increases its incentive to reach an agreement. But then the president has usually failed to sign an agreement that would bank the concessions. He simply kept the pressure on and ended up achieving nothing.
Paradoxically, American liberals and moderates have come to a similar point by a different route. They have made such a fetish out of dialogue, negotiations, and agreements that they have given little thought to what they want to obtain out of them. It is not, as the conservatives charge, that the moderates and liberals give away the store in their desire for agreement. Rather they have agreed so quickly to vacuous treaties that little has been accomplished.
William Hyland was correct about all elements of the spectrum when he asserted that "we have rarely thought out the concrete terms of a settlement with the Soviet Union [and] this amounts to a fatalistic abdication of policy." This probably did not matter too much with Brezhnev. Brezhnev thought too much in World War II terms and feared reform too much to accept any deal that would have lessened Soviet conventional might or Soviet secrecy. Now, however, Gorbachev may be willing to take more far-reaching steps, and failure to think may be more costly.
The first question that Gorbachev raises for us is whether we should try to encourage the Soviet Union's reintegration into the West and its opening to Western ideas. The question is not an easy one, for there are both potential pluses and
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