From Cold War to Detente: Change and Continuity

ROBERT S. WOOD (Charlottesville, Va., U.S.A.) From Cold War to Detente: Change and Continuity Charles Gati, editor, Caging the Bear: Containment and the Cold War, Indianapolis-New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1974. xxvi, 228 pp. Leon Gouré, Foy D. Kohler, and Mose L. Harvey, The Role of Nuclear Forces in Current Soviet Strategy, Coral Gables: Center for Advanced Studies, University of Miami, 1974. xxiii, 148 pp. Edward Luttwak, The U.S.-U.S.S.R. Nuclear Weapons Balance, Beverly Hills: Sage Pub- lications, 1974. 66 pp. It has become the accepted wisdom that the dominant features of the international politics of the post World War II period and the assumptions underlying American foreign policy are undergoing substantial changes. It is said that we are in the midst of transitions of power and thought both within and without that require-and may indeed compel-fundamental alterations in the thrust of the containment policy and liberal internationalism of the United States. If American foreign policy since World War II has becn largely inspired by polar confrontation and doctrines of political and economic reconstruction and nation- building among the non-communist states, recent detente policy is aimed in the words of its primary expositor, Henry Kissinger, at the encouragement of "an environment in which competitors can regulate and restrain their differences and ultimately move from competition to cooperation."1 The primary focus of American policy thus becomes less the containment-and, in effect, isolation-of the Soviet Union than the development of a nexus of relations which are designed to "create a vested interest in cooperation and restraint."2 And whereas the earlier containment doctrine largely represented a negative policy vis-a-vis the East and placed dominant emphasis on the development and maintenance of our alliance ties with Western Europe, Japan, and other states of important strategic interest, the practical result of recent policy is to reverse the emphasis and increasingly assess our alliance relations in terms of their contribution to Soviet-American detente. This approach is ultimately founded on three assumptions: First, that "the Soviet Union has begun to practice foreign policy-at least partially-as a relationship between states rather than as international civil war"3 and that, in any case, common interests in survival and some degree of predictability are more important factors in U.S.-Soviet relations than basic changes in their regimes or ideological motivations; second, that a strong Western military posture and a continuing intimacy within the Western alliance will be maintained; and, third, that a separation between domestic and international politics and a clearer acceptance of spheres of influence in the policies of the Soviet Union and the United States can be established. 1. "Secretary Kissinger's statement on U.S.-Soviet Relations," News Release of the Bureau of Public Affairs, Department of State, Office of Media Service, Washington, D.C., Special Report, September 19, 1974, No. 6, pp. 3-4. 2. "Secretary Kissinger at Yacem in Terris," ibid., October 10, 1973, pp. 4-5. 3. Ibid., p. 4. 199 Some explanation of the latter notion may be necessary. Although Secretary Kissinger has clearly sought to delimit interference by the Soviet Union and the United States in each other's domestic affairs, he seems to have coupled this principle with a notion of spheres of influence. Given recent revelations about the extent of American involvement in Chile and President Ford's and Secretary Kissinger's justification for such intervention in behalf of the maintenance of free opposition to Allende-one friendly to us-it seems clear that the principle of non-intervention is not absolute. Moreover, the fact that the United States appears to be less interested than its allies in the free flow of peoples and ideas between East and West Europe sustains this interpre- tation. And, indeed, the classical notion of power politics has always maintained a distinction between great and small powers and included concepts of spheres of influence. Inhibitions on ideological preferences and restrictions on direct interference in domestic politics arise in this view not from abstract notions of justice but from calculations of prudence-which do include, it must be noted, the elaboration of prudential rules of international behavior and guides for alliance maintenance. Assumptions about Soviet behavior and motivations, the military balance, and the basic character of international politics in the last quarter of the twentieth century thus undergi-d the American administration's approach to detente. The recent studies by Charles Gati, et al., on Caging the Bear: Containment and the Cold War, by Leon Goure, Foy D. Kohler, and Mose L. Harvey on The Role of Nuclear Forces in Current Soviet Strategy, and by Edward Luttwak on The U.S.-U.S.S.R. Nuclear Weapons Balance, may thus all be profitably viewed as analyses of the assumptions or direction of Secretary Kissinger's policy ranging from minor caveats to major objections to that policy. Charles Gati's selection and organization of essays on the origins and dynamics of the cold war, as well as an explanation of possible alternatives to American containment policy, on balance tend to sustain Secretary Kissinger's detente policy. Nlr. Gati's basic notion is that Soviet-American relations have advance from general confrontation in Europe characterized by the threat of force and substantial expectations of general war (1945-1949) to a period of competition in Europe and Asia in which economic instruments became more important (1950-1962) to an era in which confrontation and global competition were supplemented by limited cooperation among enemies-what Raymond Aron has called "enemy partners" (1963-1972). In effect, although the characteristic features of each epoch were never completely superceded, there was a movement toward less tense relations and rhv beginning of common agree- ments. The heart of detente, as Mr. Gati sees it, is the definitive acknowledgement by the West of a divided Germany and Soviet hegemony in East-Central Europe-thus lessen- ing miscalculations, suspicions, and expectations of generalized war over these issues. Although he accepts the charge that the Russians have made few, if any, concrete concessions as a condition of the Western recognition, he argues that the political environment created by Western concessions is more likely to be productive of East- West linkages and an atmosphere of restraint than intransigence over issues which the West can little affect in any case. The questions around which Mr. Gati's anthology revolve concern the setting of the cold war, arguments as to alternatives, and the nature of present American-Soviet .

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