Problems in Paradigm

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Problems in ParadigmAuthor(s): Gregory FlynnSource: Foreign Policy, No. 74 (Spring, 1989), pp. 63-84Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1148852 .

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PROBLEMS IN PARADIGM

by Gregory Flynn

For the West, the division of Europe and the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe have always been proclaimed the basic sources of insecurity on the Continent. But although the West has consistently preached the need for radical change, it has been clear, at least since 1956, that the West is unwilling to support such change. Western desire for stability has prevailed over Western interest in changing the European order.

Over the years, Western policy has never effectively come to grips with how to maintain short-term stability while promoting the change still considered necessary for long- term stability. The issue has essentially been finessed by allowing rhetoric to substitute for policy. As a result, for more than three decades the West has lived with a fundamental contradiction between its declared aims and the actual conduct of its policy toward the East in Europe.

Blurring the issue became easier with time. It seemed clear that no fundamental political change would be forthcoming either in East- ern Europe or in the Soviet-East European relationship. Further, as the East-West stalemate became more entrenched it also became more stable. These two processes actually reinforced one another. The absence of military conflict between the East and the West in Europe produced greater tolerance of the political and territorial status quo; in turn, the greater stability enhanced the acceptability of the status quo.

Enter Mikhail Gorbachev. The West now faces a situation where a Soviet leader has set loose the forces of change both within the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe. The consequences are potentially far-reaching and extend to Gorbachev's proclaimed need for "new thinking" in international relations,

GREGORY FLYNN is a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment.

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which seems to envisage a less hostile version of peaceful coexistence.

How to respond to these changes is one of the most critical questions facing Western policymakers. Unfortunately, current West- ern policy deliberations are burdened by the heavy legacy of the past 40 years. The West finds itself with no adequate doctrine of change from which to draw guidelines for promoting Western objectives. The West does not know what kind of change it actually wants-and is willing to support-in Eastern Europe, in the Soviet-East European relationship, or in the East-West relationship in Europe.

Thus far Western attention has been fo- cused almost exclusively on how to use the current phase of Soviet policy to bring under control the East-West military competition and to restructure Soviet forces into a less offensive posture. The West considers the existing military situation in Europe the primary source of potential instability on the Continent. While reducing the military confrontation in Europe is an important objective, the rationale for its domination of the Western agenda is fundamentally misguided. Many observers believe that the West could adequately resolve its basic security problems in Europe if only a viable arms control regime could be negotiated. One of the unfortunate consequences of the past 40 years is that the West has forgotten the reasons for the Europe- an stalemate and no longer understands the role played in it by military power.

Even in a world of successful conventional arms control, the West would quickly discover that the fundamental sources of potential instability and thus insecurity in Europe would remain. Military power has only en- forced the division of Europe. The essence of that division remains the divergent concepts of internal order that prevail on each side of the East-West divide. Europe's long-term security problems are a product of not only the regional preponderance of Soviet power but also the absence of legitimacy for the governments in Eastern Europe.

The challenge to the West, therefore, is not simply how to use Soviet new thinking to

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enhance short-term stability in Europe through arms control, but also how to help channel the forces of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in the East to create sounder preconditions for long-term stability. The West must replace its hollow doctrine of demanding revolutionary change with a new one that addresses head-on the question of what type of transition both offers short-term stability and moves the European system toward longer-term viability.

Embracing a new doctrine will not be easy, for it will require that some basic Western premises be re-examined. But the West no longer has the choice of living with the comfortable static assumptions of the past four decades. To do so would leave it incapable of taking maximum advantage of the changes under way in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The West cannot afford to conduct policy by default in a world where the winds of change blow from the East.

That a Soviet leader is now responsible for unleashing the forces of change in Eastern Europe shatters one set of assumptions under- pinning Western thinking about future Euro- pean security. To be sure, the postwar period has provided substantial evidence of Soviet fear of East European deviation from the Soviet model and of its willingness to use force to protect the integrity of the socialist fraterni- ty. Now, however, the impulse for change is coming from Moscow, and Soviet leaders openly proclaim that there may be more than one path to socialism.

The new situation requires new premises to guide Western policy, but it is much less clear what precise assumptions should be made about the nature and consequences of changes in the East. How durable and how deep will reform in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe be? What will be the consequences of reform for the legitimacy and structure of East European regimes and hence for the short- and long-term stability of Eastern Eu- rope? What will be the impact of the reform process on the Soviet-East European relationship? What are the implications for the West- ern relationship with Eastern Europe? Is it possible that reform in the East could dimin-

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ish the incompatibility of societal models that is the heart of the European stalemate, hence transforming Europe into a more classic geostrategic arena?

To begin, Soviet motivation for pushing reform in Eastern Europe, while undoubtedly complex and linked to the burdens of empire abroad and reform at home, can best be understood as a new attempt to resolve a traditional Soviet problem: how to balance the desire for control in Eastern Europe with the need for viable local regimes. There is no evidence, for instance, that Soviet pursuit of reform is related to a new assessment of its geostrategic interests in Europe-and therefore to some postulated willingness to release its East European glacis. Rather, the problem is that having always opted for control, and having imposed the Soviet economic and political model, most of Eastern Europe is now as bankrupt as the Soviet Union. Because the legitimacy of East European regimes depends heavily on economic performance, maintain- ing domestic control has become increasingly difficult in some countries.

The West has forgotten the reasons for the European stalemate and no longer understands the role played in it by military power.

The revolutionary element in the new So- viet approach is that internal change is no longer considered incompatible with control and that viability is to be achieved by reforms taking place in the Soviet Union as well as in Eastern Europe. The new approach alters the dynamic of the relationship between Moscow and its allies in that some of the reforms attempted in Moscow were first tested in Eastern Europe. The relationship has become more interactive. In turn, the question of control takes on a completely new character; control no longer simply means preventing change but must be exercised in a world of change.

The reform banner has been taken up with

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varying degrees of zeal in different East Euro- pean states. Polish and Hungarian leaders consider Soviet reforms as legitimating the liberalization they have already undertaken and as justification for further measures they deem necessary to halt the economic deteriora- tion in their countries. Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria have taken a more cautious line, each having only begun to experiment with limited doses of reform. Meanwhile, East Germany rejects glasnost and perestroika, claiming that its economic performance obviates the need for reform, while Romania resists despite its pre- carious economic conditions.

While the West is naturally concerned with the types, evenness, and speed of reform in Eastern Europe, two questions stand out in contemplating the implications of this process. First, will East European leaders be successful in offsetting the inevitably destabilizing consequences of reform? And second, will Soviet and East European concepts of reform remain compatible?

Reform in Eastern Europe is likely to be destabilizing in two ways: It will require economic sacrifices now for the promise of economic gain in the future, and it will strengthen the desire for expression of national identity. However, avoiding reform also risks rising political instability as economic conditions worsen. The Faustian bargain that lies at the heart of Gorbachev's gamble is that glasnost will give East European populations a greater stake in perestroika. As the political scientist David Mason argued in the Summer 1988 issue of International Affairs:

The hope is that "democratization" will remedy this dilemma by attempting to en- list popular participation in and commit- ment to the reforms and to inject a measure of political legitimacy at a time of economic retrenchment.... The Gorbachev-style economic reforms require the support of the population and, in Eastern Europe at least, such support is unlikely to be won without some quid pro quo. A measure of political relaxation seems to be the quid in this case.

The problem is that political relaxation may reduce, rather than enhance, the possibility of controlling instability.

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The character of the quid pro quo high- lights one of the potential problems in keeping Soviet and East European reform paths from diverging. As the European Strategy Group has pointed out, for the Soviet Union "perestroika is about efficiency and effectiveness of communism, not about its 'human face,' " even if creating a more human face has been chosen to help foster an environment condu- cive to reform.' This definition is probably valid in varying degrees for party leaders in Eastern Europe as well. Here, however, there is an important distinction between the leaders and the led. Some segments of East Euro- pean populations hold the belief that the existing system cannot be made more effi- cient; it is the system itself that must be reformed. Moreover, at least some of the East European populations, particularly in Czech- oslovakia, have actually experienced democra- cy and may understand democratization dif- ferently than Gorbachev intends.

Thus the oft posed question of where the Soviet threshold of tolerance has moved remains relevant. Clearly Gorbachev would not want to resort to an overt intervention if he considered that one or more East European countries had gone too far too fast. To do so might undercut his own reform efforts at home. The new dynamic in the Soviet-East European relationship has indeed changed the content of Moscow's "doctrine of limited sovereignty." The path to socialism can now be adapted to national conditions.

Equally certain, however, is that some threshold still exists. It is entirely probable that no one, including Gorbachev, knows precisely where these limits lie. Soviet tolerance of events in Eastern Europe will be determined interactively. What is acceptable in one country will be determined not only by indigenous conditions but also by what is happening elsewhere in Eastern Europe and by the internal process of Soviet reform, including the evolution of instabilities in the various Soviet republics.

The tolerance threshold today is almost

'European Strategy Group, The Gorbachev Chal- lenge and European Security (Baden-Baden: No- mor Verlagsgesellschaft, 1988), 111.

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certainly higher than it was in 1968. However, if the central role of the Communist party were to be seriously threatened-although the precise meaning of this may also differ from country to country-or if a state announced its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact, as Hungary did in 1956, this threshold almost surely would be crossed. As yet the Soviets have not formally repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine. The definition of "socialist internationalism" may be in flux, but there is no doubt that there will continue to be one in the future. Nor is there any evident Soviet willingness to change the formal spheres of influence in Europe.

One critical factor determining the dynam- ics and durability of reform in Eastern Europe will be the reaction of the region's leaders and populations to the new, more permissive context the Soviet Union has set for their policies and societies. East European leaders no longer have a Soviet excuse for not pursuing reform, an excuse behind which they have frequently hidden. All over Eastern Europe, intellectuals and other activists advocating reform have demonstrated their intention to take advantage of glasnost. The larger question is whether there is also more incentive now than in previous periods of ferment for self-censure by those who demand radical reform. Because the context for reform is the most permissive since World War II, there may now be a greater emphasis on preserving the favorable conditions rather than on testing Soviet limits, as has been the case in the past.

The other key factor will be the future of Soviet reform itself. To the extent that it succeeds, the tolerance for experimentation in Eastern Europe will remain. If it becomes bogged down or experiences reversals, however, the pace of East European reform is likely to become a far more sensitive issue.

Despite the uncertain character of the reform process, the West must make certain assumptions to assess the implications for European security and Western policy op- tions. The initial assumption must be that the road to reform in the East will not be smooth and straight but bumpy and full of curves, perhaps even switchbacks. Second, some of

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the changes being implemented or contem- plated, especially the critique and rewriting of history and the adjustments in ideology, may not be reversible. Third, reform will probably be permitted to advance farthest if it is carried out by a ruling party. Fourth, for Gorbachev, reform in Eastern Europe reflects a new approach to controlling the Soviet sphere of influence, not a new calculation of Soviet geostrategic interests. Finally, given the profound difficulties he faces in his attempt to reverse the Soviet economy, Gorbachev will very likely tolerate East European reform and increased autonomy if it can be demonstrated that they improve the system's efficiency. But he will probably remain fundamentally intol- erant of anything that endangers the structure of international relationships in Europe or that might make his own internal reforms more difficult to carry out. Although Gorba- chev has initiated a process that is inherently less controllable than any of his predecessors were willing to accept, he, too, has a sense of limits. The unanswerable question is whether Gorbachev will be able to impose those limits if someone threatens to exceed them.

Soviet Strategic Objectives in Europe

Assumptions about Soviet intentions have always been central to the definition of West- ern policy. One of the key assumptions behind the Western doctrine advocating radical change has been that the existing European order is unacceptable to the Soviet Union as well as to the West. While East-West tensions could be eased, as in the early 1970s, the West considered undermining the Atlantic alliance to be a constant Soviet objective; all Soviet initiatives were assumed to be aimed at sowing discord in the West. Indeed, for much of the postwar period these assumptions appear to have been correct. Soviet policy was designed both to protect the status quo in Eastern Europe and to alter it in Western Europe.

The West's response to Soviet new thinking and the formulation of a new Western doctrine of change must be based on a judgment about whether Soviet objectives in Europe remain unaltered. But this assessment has been seriously circumscribed by the paradigm

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used by Western analysts. Thus the West currently argues over whether new thinking embodies a Soviet willingness to create the basis for a new European order or whether it is a faqade behind which the Soviet Union is pursuing its traditional objectives of dividing the Atlantic alliance and forcing the United States out of Europe. The West does not consider the intermediate possibility that the Soviet Union has concluded that its security interests are adequately guaranteed within the existing order but that new policies are needed to deal with its economic and political challenges.

Substantial evidence indicates that new thinking is driven by the latter judgment and that its implications have not been adequately explored. One important reason is the tenden- cy to focus on Gorbachev as central to all important modifications of Soviet perspectives. Some important changes in Soviet attitudes on the security order in Europe have indeed taken place, changes that affect Soviet objectives. But many of these occurred in the early 1970s, not with Gorbachev's rise to power.

In brief, the basic desire for preserving hegemony in Eastern Europe remains at the heart of Soviet security interests. Spreading glasnost and perestroika to the region is motiva- ted by the desire to preserve those interests more effectively. Continuing internal atrophy would eventually lead to a collapse of the Soviet empire. Such dramatic internal reform, however, requires a stable external environment. New thinking is intended to produce that stability.

New thinking is possible because the Soviet Union no longer appears to believe that the status quo in Western Europe is an unacceptable threat and thus that control over the status quo in Eastern Europe can be achieved only by undermining that in Western Europe. As a result, the achievement of core Soviet security objectives no longer must automatically come at the expense of the West, and the Soviets can contemplate a change in the nature of the East-West competition without sacrificing their basic security interests. Soviet assumptions have changed about the conduct,

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though not the essence, of the European stalemate.

This does not mean that the USSR has ceased to view NATO or the U.S. presence in Europe as a threat. It does mean that its assessment of the character of that threat has changed, which allows the Soviet Union to conduct a far more differentiated diplomacy toward the West. The Soviet Union still has an interest in weakening Western cohesion and NATO's capacity to strengthen its military posture. But there is also greater acceptance of the organic nature of the U.S.-West European relationship and recognition of the possibilities for using West Europeans to influence Washington. As the Soviet commentator Alek- sandr Bovin argued in Izvestia in September 1985:

I will not be revealing any secrets if I say that Soviet policy takes into account the differences of views between Western Eu- rope and the United States. But it does so by no means in order to squeeze the United States out of Europe and gain political control of the continent which it so longs for, in the opinion of "perspicacious" analysts in the West. Our objective is much more modest. We would like to utilize Western Europe's potential to make good, via the transatlantic channel, the obvious shortage of common sense in the incumbent U.S. administration.2

This transformation in Soviet perspective has fundamental implications for Western policy. While it does not provide direct guidelines for what a new Western doctrine of change should be, it clearly offers an indis- pensable frame of reference for analyzing an appropriate Western response to Soviet initiatives. As such, its origins should be spelled out in detail.

Changing Soviet perceptions of the Europe- an security environment were driven primari- ly by the achievements of the first phase of European d6tente. From 1969 to 1973, a series of negotiations produced five treaties between East and West: the Moscow treaty between the

2Quoted in Robbin Laird, "Tbe Soviet Union and the Western Alliance, " in The Soviet Union and the Western Alliance, ed. Robbin Laird and Susan Clark (Boston: Unwin and Hyman, fortbcoming).

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Soviet Union and West Germany in 1970; the Warsaw treaty between West Germany and Poland later that same year; the Four-Power Agreement on Berlin of 1971; the Inter-Ger- man Accord of 1972; and the West German- Czechoslovak treaty of 1973. These treaties represented a reversal of the German approach to the postwar European settlement by providing the first formal West German renunciation of trying to revise European borders. Acceptance of the territorial status quo was now considered by the West Germans to be the only means to promote a process that would eventually alter the status quo. From the Soviet perspective, the treaties provided the first guarantees for the postwar order, confirming that they removed a primary threat through the division of Germany.

The Conference on Security and Coopera- tion in Europe (CSCE), which culminated in the Helsinki Accords of 1975, later brought about a multilateral recognition of the Euro- pean status quo. These accords served as a basic charter for the European order, with formal rules of the game that included, first and foremost, the inviolability of European frontiers and the renunciation of the use of force. By the mid-1970s, the USSR had pro- gressed significantly toward its objective of eliminating challenges to the status quo in Eastern Europe. While the Soviet Union paid a price for this by legitimating increased human rights demands, its assumption seems to have been that detente would help stabilize Eastern Europe by removing the overt West- ern challenge to these states' legitimacy and increasing economic aid from the West. With the threat to the Soviet Union posed by the "Western status quo" thus transformed, the extension of Soviet influence into Western Europe was no longer the precondition for preserving Soviet influence in Eastern Eu- rope.

In this new context, Soviet policy toward the Atlantic alliance and the U.S. presence on the Continent grew much more ambivalent. Both still remained threats to Soviet security, but they could also serve as a justification for continued Soviet hegemony in the East. The relative costs and benefits of the existing

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European order shifted, and with them, the objectives of Soviet diplomacy. Moscow was no longer as interested in destroying NATO and driving the United States from Europe. The new objectives aimed to use the West to reaffirm the status quo and Soviet control of Eastern Europe while simultaneously attempting to limit the West's ability to create new challenges for Soviet security.

The most important element in this transformation concerned Soviet attitudes toward the American presence in the European order. There can be little doubt that in the early postwar years the USSR saw the United States as a significant threat in Europe, partly because of the American use of Europe as a forward base in the strategy of containment and partly because of the direct challenge to the European status quo embodied in NATO's U.S.-led policy. But the evidence now points to Soviet acceptance of the superpowers' military presence as one of the two main elements in the current European order, the other being the division of Germany. The Soviet signature of the Four-Power Agreement, a precondition for West German ratification of the Moscow treaty, marked the turning point in Soviet attitudes. Then came U.S. participation in the CSCE. The presence of President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezh- nev at the 1975 signing of the Helsinki Final Act signaled both superpowers' acceptance to remain the guarantors of peace and security in Europe for the foreseeable future.

Western analysts tend to underestimate the importance of these events. Without a significant shift in the Soviet assessment of potential security threats, the Soviet Union would not have signed agreements guaranteeing a continued U.S. presence in Europe. The Soviets accepted the U.S. role as part of the European order to achieve their goal of securing the territorial status quo. However, it was by reaffirming European borders that the U.S. presence became acceptable to the Soviets. The character of the Western threat was altered, as were the potential means for dealing with it.

This is not to say that the essence of the Western threat-the challenge to political

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order in Eastern Europe-changed. But that challenge was now more indirect. Moreover, once the territorial status quo in Europe had been accepted by the West, the threats posed by the Soviet Union's two main adversaries, the United States and West Germany, could be dissociated from one another. West Germa- ny remained at the center of the Western challenge to the USSR, but the United States became simultaneously an adversary and a potential partner.

West Germany's acceptance of the territorial status quo transformed the nature of its challenge. As long as West Germany formally maintained its goal of reunification and reject- ed the postwar territorial settlement, it represented a rejection of the existing order. But Moscow had used the German bogy as a convenient tool for consolidating its hold on Eastern Europe. Once West Germany adopted the more modest goal of overcoming the division of Europe through rapprochement and formally renounced its desire to alter postwar borders, the West German threat no longer had the same force in Eastern Europe. Ironically, therefore, removing the West Ger- man challenge to the current order served to increase the potential for German influence. The Soviet Union also had to consider the worrisome possibility that rapprochement would foster the change in Eastern Europe that its West German advocates desired.

Western acceptance of the postwar territorial settlement also changed the U.S. challenge in Europe. Although the agreements anchored the Americans in Europe, they actually diminished American influence by weakening one of the chief legitimating elements of the American presence. The U.S. threat to the Soviet Union also no longer had a European- specific dimension that was separable from the global competition between the two superpowers. Finally, as the United States formally became more of a status quo power in Europe, it had more difficulty using Europe as a staging ground in the global rivalry because NATO military and diplomatic moves were no longer measured by cold war criteria.

Clearly the Soviet Union will never be able to overlook the fact that Europe remains the

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focal point of the global competition between the two superpowers. Hence winning the battle there must have great importance both ideologically and geostrategically. But by the mid-1970s the benefits of the U.S. presence in Europe began to offset the costs from the Soviet perspective.

What happened is that the primary U.S. threats to Soviet interests in Europe were no longer to the existing order but came from within the order. The USSR no longer had the same interest, therefore, in excluding the Americans from the order, especially given that their presence was helping to reduce the other remaining threats to the existing order. The United States helps to guarantee the continued division of Germany, which makes any potential German challenge to Soviet interests far more manageable; the U.S. presence makes extremely unlikely the possibility that any European power alone will ever challenge the dominant Soviet position on the Continent; and the U.S. presence weakens West Europeans' incentives to provide for their own defense, thereby preventing the emergence of a more significant geostrategic entity and capitalist pole of attraction. Fur- ther, the U.S. role ensures the option of raising European issues to the level of super- power interests, over the heads of the Europe- an states. All that remains of the American threat in Europe is the declining potential to use the Continent as a forward base.

Gorbachev's new thinking and recent So- viet arms control initiatives grow to a large extent out of these Soviet perspectives. They embody a substantial continuity of basic So- viet objectives since the early 1970s, but also a substantial shift in means: the heightened importance of military issues in Moscow's European diplomacy.

The new Soviet interest in arms control has been occasioned by the sharp downturn in the fortunes of Soviet European policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s resulting from three important miscalculations. The first was the assumption that detente and an influx of Western economic aid would be sufficient to stabilize Eastern Europe and help to legiti- mate its regimes. The birth of the Polish labor

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union Solidarity and the Polish riots in 1980 proved this belief incorrect. Second, and ultimately more important, was NATO's decision to deploy intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) in Europe-to a great extent a response to the Soviet development and deployment of the SS-20 nuclear missile. As seen from Mos- cow, the Polish instability represented a new form of internal challenge to order in Eastern Europe, while the NATO move strongly reas- serted the Western challenge to the overall European order. The American Pershing II nuclear missile, with its short flight time and extreme accuracy, also added a new level of direct military threat to the Soviet Union. Finally, the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan generated negative European readings of So- viet intentions that clearly had not been foreseen.

When Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he faced the daunting task of recouping some of the foreign-policy losses of the previous decade and providing the proper context for the reforms he planned to initiate. Relaunching detente in Europe was basic to both, and as the INF missile deadlock was at the core of the European detente deadlock, arms control was the natural area for initiatives. It implied substantial change in the Soviet position on key issues, but Gorbachev presumably considered it the only way, or at least the best way, to accomplish several Soviet objectives at once.

First, arms control agreements would help reinstate the legitimacy of the existing order that the new levels of East-West military confrontation had denied. Second, the right kinds of agreements could carry the process begun in the early 1970s several steps further, reducing the potential for future challenges to the status quo. Such agreements would, of course, leave in place the military forces necessary for the Soviet Union to maintain an enforcement function in Eastern Europe. Third, arms control was the only way to remove the new threat to Soviet territory brought by the arrival of the Pershing II missiles in Europe. Successful negotiations should also provide leverage over future West- ern military efforts considered to be politically or militarily threatening by the East. Lower-

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ing the need for military spending would provide an additional benefit for the Soviets by freeing resources for other, more urgent, tasks.

The Soviet interest in European arms control seems to have been strengthened by three other factors as well. First was the recognition-a key lesson of the 1970s-that uncon- strained military programs can produce unan- ticipated security problems. Hence came a willingness to examine how negotiated con- straints might leave the Soviet Union no worse off in pursuit of its objectives, and eventually even better off. In addition, with the emergence of parity the psychology of military competition could change for the Soviet Union; each small ingredient of military power no longer carried the same importance as a symbol of equality. Therefore, the Soviet Union can now more easily contemplate weapons reductions to limit the threat of Western nuclear forces to its security and to the pursuit of Soviet political objectives. Re- ducing the role of nuclear weapons in the European confrontation has thus become a natural emphasis of Soviet policy.

Finally, nuclear parity has led Soviet military strategy to focus more on the conventional option in Europe. Western analysts might disagree on Soviet motivations, but all would concede that nuclear parity has permitted the Soviet Union to change its approach to whether war in Europe would automatically be nuclear. While Soviet discussion on these issues had already begun in the late 1960s, by the 1980s the idea of trying to keep a European war conventional had apparently become policy. This reinforced the Soviet desire to reduce by other means, such as arms control, the possibilities for escalation to nuclear war. For a combination of reasons, the Soviet Union now considers arms control a means to make Europe safer and more stable and to curb the possibilities for new Western threats to emerge.

Under these conditions, arms control has become a tool not to push the Americans out of Europe but to structure the American presence and thereby minimize its threat to Soviet interests. Arms control, when coupled

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with other detente initiatives in Europe, rein- forces the notion that some change might be forthcoming over the East-West divide, which in turn helps keep off balance both West European and Atlantic alliance efforts to build a more effective defense-thus minimizing the U.S. threat from within the system. The possible gains of this strategy still must be balanced against the risk that Soviet control could be diminished in Eastern Europe. But European arms control has become an ideal tool for the Soviet Union to promote a further legitimation of the existing order while assur- ing that the political and military threats in that order will be reduced.

A New Doctrine of Change

Many now argue that the West is facing one of its most difficult moments in the postwar period. The fear is that members of the Atlantic alliance are ill-equipped politically to protect Western security interests when con- fronted with the inventiveness and seduc- tiveness of Gorbachev's initiatives. Indeed, if Gorbachev follows through with his proposal for unilateral force cuts, and if an agreement on conventional forces subsequently proves feasible, some worry that the West will lose its enemy and then its unity, despite the continu- ation of the West's basic security problem.

These concerns are not entirely unfounded. Yet it is at least as plausible to confront the current juncture as one of unprecedented opportunity. Never before has the possibility even existed that the longer-term problems of European security and stability might be addressed. It still may not be possible, but to move events in this direction the West must adjust the assumptions shaping its policy. While the West must not overestimate its influence on outcomes in the East, this adjust- ment is a precondition for aligning Western policy with Western objectives and for accu- rately gauging the seriousness of Gorbachev's moves.

The West clearly should be most interested in reducing or eliminating the real threats to Western security. The Soviet offensive military posture remains the most visible such threat. Soviet conventional forces in Europe

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have grown over the past decade, particularly in the quality and quantity of armaments. Although it is unlikely that the Soviet Union would actually initiate a military attack against the West, a basic Western objective should be to diminish this threat through opportunities arising from Soviet new thinking.

If the above analysis of Soviet Eurostrategic objectives is correct, this goal may be achiev- able. Gorbachev's promised unilateral reductions and force restructuring point in this direction. At the same time, however, instabilities inherent in the reform process in Eastern Europe may well reduce Moscow's willingness to go beyond certain limits in altering the Soviet force posture, at least until the controllability of reform becomes clearer. Moreover, Gorbachev may be able to stabilize the external environment for his reforms, at least in the short run, by simply beginning the conventional force talks. In any case, reaching an agreement will be devilishly difficult, and Western policy cannot be so singularly fo- cused on reducing military confrontation in Europe that it fails to address the security threats that will outlast any foreseeable conventional arms control agreement.

A deeper problem facing the West is to formulate a response to the unpredictable reform process in the Soviet Union and East- ern Europe. The first step is to clarify the threats inherent in the European order and the current stalemate system. Only then will the West be able to define the kinds of change likely to diminish those threats and the means appropriate to pursuing the ends.

Clearly the underlying threat to Western security in Europe remains the incompatibility of Eastern and Western concepts of domestic and international order. All societies tend to apply the same values toward the conduct of external relations that they apply at home. Of specific interest for European security are the different domestic approaches of demo- cratic and communist regimes to conflict resolution, which in turn give rise to a fundamental difference in their approach to regulat- ing international conflict in the absence of

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military power. The rule of law is replaced by the arbitrary power of individual whim.

The corollary threat remains the lack of legitimacy of East European regimes and therefore the absence of true stability within the European order. Even in a world of conventional arms control characterized by East-West military stability and a certain geostrategic legitimacy to the European order, the West would still pose an existential threat to the regimes in the East. The West is a threat to the East not because of what it is or how much military power it has, but because of what the East is. Until East European regimes achieve popular legitimacy, military power will remain the ultimate guarantee against unwanted change in the region. Should the Soviets use military force in Eastern Europe, the West would do nothing to prevent it in the interests of preserving East-West stability. Nevertheless, the West will always feel threatened by the possibility that a Soviet-East European confrontation could spill over into an East-West confrontation, even if contained at lower levels of military power. A European order, even a stalemate, cannot be viable if one side can be maintained only by threat of force.

While the character of Soviet power is a major threat to Western interests and values, it must also be acknowledged that the postwar order in Europe has positive dimensions that need not be sacrificed in the creation of a safer and more durable system. It is not the existence of a Soviet sphere of influence that threatens the West but the way influence is exercised in the sphere. Indeed, just as the United States has served as Western Europe's great "pacifier" during the postwar period, so the Soviet shadow in Eastern Europe has quelled many deep-seated historical animosi- ties and brought about a certain stability on the Continent.3 Consequently, the Western interest is to find an arrangement that pre- serves the stabilizing elements of the current order while eliminating those that threaten stability.

The search for such an arrangement de-

3See Josef Joffe, "Europe's American Pacifier," FOREIGN POLICY 54 (Spring 1984): 64-82.

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mands a differentiated Western doctrine of change. It must recognize that both East and West are aware of the ultimate stability of existing geostrategic arrangements, and that mutually accepted restraints, if not shared principles of order, have long performed a stabilizing function in Europe. The West must take up the question of how to promote change that will not endanger this modus vivendi, given that the absence of change still endangers long-term stability.

The key to creating the conditions for constructive change will be to convince the Soviet Union that the West does not desire to change geostrategic realities but wants only to change the way power is wielded in the East. The implicit bargain would be that the West would not challenge the Soviet sphere of influence if change were forthcoming in the way influence was exercised within the sphere. Ultimately such a policy would promote change within the Soviet system but would not openly threaten the geostrategic order in Europe.

It is not the existence of a Soviet sphere of influence that threatens the West but the way influence is exercised in the sphere.

To give substance to this general approach the West must define the kinds of change that not only will attenuate the underlying threats to its interests but also will not be openly revolutionary in the short run. The Soviet and East European reform process must be used to promote precisely this type of change. Given that the path to reform may be perilous, a key Western objective at this juncture should be to help maximize the amount of "irreversible change" in Eastern Europe.

One focus for change should be an attempt to reduce the arbitrary nature of the rights enjoyed by populations in the East without immediately threatening the structure of political power in those societies. The West must help foster greater openness and tolerance of diversity within these societies. Unless they

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reduce their internal secrecy and paranoia it will be impossible for them to become more dependable and predictable security "part- ners." The most important tools for this lengthy process will be not high-profile initiatives but a substantial expansion of cultural and youth exchanges, as well as an improved flow of information across borders. While the right to emigrate should clearly be considered a basic right, the West must avoid making this the centerpiece of Western diplomacy. In- stead, Western efforts should concentrate on improving individual rights within the societies.

A second focus should be on reforms that gradually erode the authoritarian structures of political power in the East. The most important reforms are likely to be those fostering economic decentralization and the transfer of decision-making authority to industrial man- agers, precisely the types of restructuring sanctioned by Gorbachev. Economic liberalization, to the extent that it is successful, holds the promise of being more durable because the very legitimacy of the East European regimes is so intimately linked to economic performance. While not incompatible with continued political dominance by current party elites, economic liberalization clearly fosters the type of pluralism that the West must encourage.

However, a host of other demands for reform that local intellectuals currently are placing on East European regimes do not fit neatly into the above framework but are issues on which Western governments will need to have a position, such as the legalization of alternative political parties. The West does not want to be seen as siding with the regimes it claims must change, but at the same time it does not want to see the reform process cut short because the authorities are losing control. There are no easy guidelines for dealing with this quandary, but the West would do well to state clearly its refusal to support flights of fancy that threaten to undermine central authority. Subsequently, quiet diplomacy seems the only solution.

The West may have an opportunity to help make the current European order safer. Cer-

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tainly the potential for Western influence in Eastern Europe, while modest, has never been greater since World War II. The challenge is to adjust doctrine and policy so that the West can best use change in the East to ameliorate the negative effects of Europe's division and set in motion processes that might address the root causes of the European stalemate. Ulti- mately, the evolution of East European societies may lead to a profound change in the East- West relationship in Europe. While that will remain a basic Western objective, it must be conceived of only as part of a long-term process.

The Western preoccupation with military security in Europe and with harnessing the winds of change to control the East-West military confrontation has left it with a policy that addresses only the symptoms, not the causes, of Europe's security problems. The West must adopt a more comprehensive, balanced approach to the current situation in Europe. Conventional stability and evolutionary change must be pursued together because they naturally reinforce one another. A major conventional arms control agreement may well provide a kind of legitimacy that will permit evolutionary change in Eastern Eu- rope. By the same token, a new Western doctrine of evolutionary change that does not overtly challenge the existing order may well increase the possibilities for an East-West agreement on substantial conventional force reductions. By adopting a more political approach the West would promote its narrower military objectives. Moreover, if in spite of the more favorable environment conventional arms control proves to be as difficult and lengthy a process as many believe, the West at least will have a coherent policy for reducing the core threat to its security in Europe.

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Problems in Paradigm