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Introduction: U.S. and the Soviet Union: From Superpowers to Superpartners?
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19690 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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9 / 1991 |
648 Words |
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In the eighties, Margaret Thatcher remarked that Gorbachev looked like a man the West could do business with; in the nineties, George Bush said "not yet." The president's cautious words mark the newest stage of U.S.-Soviet relations: a realpolitik that operates within an emerging new world order and is not impressed by euphoric predictions about the end of history.
The prospects of the new U.S.-Soviet relationship are neither excessively dark nor tremendously bright. They are realistic, based on a mutual understanding of the need to work for however long toward the goal of superpower cooperation. Accordingly, any "grand bargain" is limited by what the United States can afford and how much the Soviets can absorb. Strategic agreements are constrained by fluctuations in the Kremlin's power.
Nonetheless, the summitry has been steady. Presidents Bush and Gorbachev signed the long-awaited START treaty in Moscow. And the Soviet leader made an unprecedented appeal to the leaders of the advanced economies at their London summit.
The response was restrained but encouraging: The Soviets will be given technical rather than economic assistance and granted associate membership in the World Bank and the IMF. A few G-7 countries will offer loans to private Soviet entrepreneurs, who are in the greatest need.
Gorbachev demonstrated his considerable worth to the Soviet Union at the G-7 summit. He gained the Soviets membership in the most exclusive clubs of the international economy, something the Soviet republics could not have achieved by themselves. Building a solid partnership between Moscow and the republics is the most difficult task now facing the Soviet leader. Gorbachev's success, or failure, will determine future U.S.-Soviet relations. What can be expected? Will reform continue in the Soviet Union? Or will there be a violent reaction from the KGB and the military? THE WORLD & I asked Sovietologists Adam Ulam, Marshall Goldman, and Dimitri Simes for their best thinking.
Adam Ulam, director of Harvard University's Russian Research Center, traces the relations between the superpowers from the Bolshevik revolutions of 1917 to the Gorbachev revolution of 1985. Under Gorbachev, the Soviets have moved from automatically opposing the United States' every international move to joining the new world order with Washington and Moscow as superpartners at its head. To maintain its position, the Soviet Union will likely continue to work with the United
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