Gobachevs New Foreign Policy and its Consequences - Essay Example

Gobachev’s ‘New Foreign Policy’ and its Consequences Mikhail Gorbachevs ‘New Thinking’ was not just a catchphrase for a new foreign policy built upon traditional Russian ideologies. The revolutionary concept began during the decline of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s. It was based on the idea that there can be a relationship between national and internal security and that military power is not the only method to provide a secure national defense. The transformation in foreign policy thinking profoundly impacted policy making and was based on the realization that the real security threat to Russia came from the deteriorating economy due to excessive military spending. Rather than applying the overt exhibition of military power, Gorbachev chose to apply political influence. He improved diplomatic relations and economic cooperation by such actions as unannounced personal appearances at public events both within and outside Soviet borders. Gorbachev charismatically utilized the world media and made political concessions in the resolution of regional conflicts and arms negotiations that were previously unimaginable under the old regime. The ‘New Thinking’ aided the Soviet Union in garnering wide approval of many nations. Its peace-making policy that released Soviet control over Eastern Europe ultimately led to the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War. Its success would entail radical changes not only in the way the economy functions, but in social and cultural policy, in Soviet political life, and ultimately, in the way in which the Soviet Union deals with the larger international community. By-products of the ‘New Thinking,’ perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) initiated far-reaching governmental policy changes that affected virtually every aspect of Soviet life. These new concepts were a distant departure from previous Soviet practices. This discussion will focus on Russia’s new approach to foreign policy and how it was designed to tie in with internal reforms. It will briefly review recent Soviet political history leading up to this new way of thinking including how such a radical departure from past procedures and policies was accomplished and the subsequent consequences this reversal of political thought inspired as well as its far-reaching effects. Gorbachev’s foreign policy approach was a direct result of domestic concerns. Gorbachev viewed economic and political restructuring as not simply the basis of domestic revitalization, it was essential to sustain the Soviet Union’s position as an international power. Gorbachev described the connection between his domestic and foreign policy programs. “The success of efforts at internal reform will determine whether or not the Soviet Union will enter the twenty-first century in a manner worthy of a great power.”1 New Soviet government leaders, led by Gorbachev, introduced radical changes to the Soviet system. He initiated perestroika, a series of economic reforms meant to eliminate ineffective administrative structures without fundamentally altering the state-run economy. Politically, Gorbachev introduced glasnost so as to decrease the control of the state and Communist Party interests, the obstacles to economic reform. Political reform was successful but also initiated opposition that ultimately led to Gorbachev’s political demise. New foreign policy thinking was created and implemented to support the pressing needs for economic reform and internal political reforms. These reforms reunited Germany and earned Gorbachev a good deal of popularity throughout the world, more so than in Russia. It also earned him the Nobel Peace prize and an honored position in history. Characteristic of Soviet ideologies from the past, the primary attention of its new leadership was on the domestic issues – first, on economic and social circumstances, then on political and cultural affairs – all ahead of foreign interactions. “By comparison with the ambitious plans for domestic restructuring and the discussion of other changes, from multiple candidate elections to a comprehensive price reform, the sphere of Soviet foreign policy appeared, at first sight, to have been relatively neglected and seemed to have been altered more in form and appearance than in substance.”2 The Russian Republic had possessed the authority to administrate foreign policy since the 1936 Soviet constitution was amended in 1944 but little was developed on this front until the 1980’s. New thinking emerged from the failings of the Soviet government leading up to this period. In 1956, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev revealed Joseph Stalin’s crimes against his own people which began to inspire the younger leaders within the Communist Party to consider alternative thoughts regarding socialism. Khrushchev moved toward a conception of common interests in an effort to avoid global nuclear war following the Cuban missile crisis. He was subsequently removed from office in 1964 because this open foreign policy concept was perceived as showing weakness by those of conservative leanings who were in the majority. The younger members of the Soviet leadership, however, embraced this new, more open design of foreign policy. “As Gorbachev recounts in his memoirs, however, the legacy of rethinking Soviet socialism at home and abroad remained in the minds of the young leadership cohort moving up through party ranks, a legacy that the Soviet repression of change in Czechoslovakia in 1968 reinforced.”3 The transformation from old regime ideologies to the new continued into the next decade. “In the 1970s, younger Soviet scholars advancing through the ranks began to link up with transnational networks of scientists in the United States and Europe who supported arms control and confrontation reduction.”4 The continuation of foreign policy ideals of this younger group and its exposure to new concepts of arms control and security cooperation from outside the Soviet Union was a necessary circumstance for new thinking. The establishment of the Soviet leadership did slowly begin to understand the limitations of current political philosophies and began to change the system themselves by constructing alternative concepts. The younger group no longer had the obstacle of those who insisted to clinging to the old regime. “The new thinkers had their ideas, but they also had the powerful backing of political leaders.”5 New thinking was based on propositions that inverted Leninist theories of foreign policy. First, new thinking rejected the view that capitalist and socialist states were mutually exclusive and that the existence of one meant a primary threat to the security and interests of the other. New thinkers maintained that common human interests, particularly in the avoidance of nuclear war were more urgent than state interests and challenged the idea that military equivalence was necessary for security. “Gorbachev disavowed the Brezhnev Doctrine, which justified Soviet imposition of socialism in Eastern Europe, in favor of ‘freedom of choice’ in his December 1988 speech to the United Nations.”6 New thinkers, who feared the terrible consequences of nuclear war, worked to reverse the presumption that the purpose of military power was to defeat Soviet opponents. They argued that the purpose of military policy is to prevent war, not to pursue it. “This proposition, in particular, enabled new thinkers to engage Western scholars in collaborative international seminars and in publications that advocated cooperative security and joint efforts to prevent war.”7 Gorbachev agreed to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987 which eliminated a mass of nuclear weaponry and in 1988, cut Soviet forces in Eastern Europe by a half-million. The Soviet Union withdrew its army from Afghanistan in 1989 and did not interfere as reformist governments in Hungary and Poland allowed East Germans to pass through their countries while escaping to the West. The Berlin Wall fell during Gorbachev’s presidency and “in 1990, the Soviet Union and the West negotiated not only German reunification, but also the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and a new Charter of Europe, declaring an end to division of the continent.”8 The Cold War was rendered effectively non-existent by 1990 because of Gorbachev’s policies based on the concepts of new thinking. Soviet relations with Europe improved dramatically during the Gorbachev era, mainly because of the INF Treaty and the collapse of communist domination in Eastern Europe during 1989-90. In 1990, Gorbachev and West German chancellor Helmut Kohl worked out an agreement by which the Soviet Union consented to a unified Germany within NATO. By the June 1990 Washington summit, “the United States-Soviet relationship had improved to such an extent that Gorbachev characterized it as almost a ‘partnership’ between the two countries.”9 Gorbachevs new thinking initiatives were seen by the entire world as revolutionary in terms of freedom and democracy in all of Eastern Europe as evidenced by the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him in 1990. The economic policies during his tenure, however steadily brought the country to a catastrophic situation. The coup of 1991 that removed him from office, for three days, had little to do with the economy though. Members of the older, more conservative wing of the government were against the signing of a new union treaty that would unify the republics into a democratic nation. This ‘old thinking’ would not be sustained even after Gorbachev’s resignation in 1991. The Soviet Union dissolved at this time but ‘new thinking’ persisted. President Boris Yeltsin and Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev plainly indicated that Russia had common interests and could benefit from political ties to the West. Kozyrev even appealed for integration and collaboration with Europe and the U.S. and characterised Russia’s interests with the ‘civilized’ world; quite a distant perspective from recent Soviet foreign political rhetoric. Yeltsin’s government emphasized cooperation with the West for reasons that were not based on security as much as it was the integration of Russia into the world’s economy. These associations would also bring direct financial support.10 Even before his election, Yeltsin attempted to bind closer relations with Western Europe on behalf of the Russian Republic. In his first foreign trip after the failure of the 1991 coup had substantially improved his stature as president of the Russian Republic, Yeltsin visited Germany to seek protection for Germans residing in Russia. After 1991 Russia’s relations with Western Europe realized a level of integration that the Soviet Union had desired, but had never achieved. New thinking was never formed into policy. The concept is simple and nothing more than just that, a concept. The political leaders who introduced new thinking were philosophical intellectuals, not necessarily knowledgeable in foreign policy. An influential faction of the Russian leadership has a strong interest to limit the military power of the United States thus building up theirs. The Russian military is not the power of politics within the leadership that it once was which caused conflicts within the structuring of foreign policies. “In contrast to nationalists and communists, the new thinkers did not assume that Russian national interests must conflict with those of Western countries. They were concerned that, unless Russia clearly defined its interests, the country would not be able to engage cooperatively on security, a policy priority they continued to advocate.”11 Russia had shed Soviet foreign policy ideologies but its economy continued its crash. Many hard-line leaders argued abandoning old regime policies and adopting new Western ideals had brought economic misery to the country. “The backlash was felt as early as December 1993 when nationalists and Communists won a substantial plurality in Russia’s legislative elections. Aleksei Pushkov, an influential journalist close to the new thinkers, declared, ‘The honeymoon is over.’”12 The ideas of the new thinkers were widely discredited in the mid-1990’s but interdependence and non-military security still remained a prominent theme for Russian political leaders. The 1998 monetary crisis uncovered the negative effects that can result from interdependence among nations. New thinkers, who had continued to argue for cooperation and orientation toward the West were faced with the realisms of geopolitics. Russia seemed to have joined the international economy just to suffer its shortcomings. “Gorbachev continues to call for ‘global humanism’ and unashamedly calls it ‘new thinking.”13 From the time of the 2001 terrorist acts in New York, Russian leaders and political analysts have placed terrorism among the leading threats to Russian security. One dimension of the threat was the political and military conflicts in Chechnya. The republic had fostered connections between associated terrorist networks and some of the groups that were fighting Russia. Terrorist organizations operating in Central Asia were threatening the stability in republics of the former Soviet Union which attracted further Russian anxiety. Before the 9/11 attacks, Russia and the U.S. had been motivated to cooperate politically including joint efforts to fight the drug trade which finances much of terrorist networks. Although the cooperation was promising, the U.S. had publicly denounced Russia’s involvement in Chechnya and a separation developed between the countries in the 1990s. The bond that began to develop from new thinking ideas was overshadowed by continuing tensions regarding missile defense, NATO, and the Chechnya situation.14 From the Russian perspective, the United States had been forced to finally accept the responsibility of fighting international terrorism after September 11. Vladimir Putin brought Russia into the counterterrorist coalition and overcame voices in Russia’s leadership warning against cooperating with the U.S. They feared that a U.S. presence in Russia and Eurasia would take the place of Russian influence. With a speech on September 24, Putin clearly aligned himself with new thinking ideals when he rejected the aggressive geopolitical philosophy behind such cautions in favor of such unifications of efforts in counterterrorism and coalitions based on common security interests. Putin’s new thinking based policies remain consistent with the evolution of Russian foreign policy during the past two years. His policy of being politically active in Europe has been successful in both political and on economic terms. With the Russian government’s and Putin’s public response to September 11, it became evident that Russian policy includes a combination of new thinking towards internationalism and of economic realism. Putin’s policy is based on economic reforms and on the assertion of political control which is dominated by domestic and economic concerns. He has tried to stabilise Eurasian politics with international economic integration thereby addressing both Russia’s national interests in Eurasia’s stability and influence and in developing sectors of the economy, the goal being to enable Russia to compete in international markets. To aid in the accomplishment of these goals, Russia has developed relations with China, Iran, India, and other nations throughout Europe. The U.S. so-called counterterrorist war in the Middle East will add to instability in the region. Gorbachev approved of the U.S. attacks on terrorism in Afghanistan but warns against reliance solely on military force. Anatoly Chernaev, Gorbachev’s chief foreign policy aide, who believed that the September attack had “’put an absolute end to what remained of the Cold War,’ sees hope that the United States now has a stake in Russian strength and integration. He also warns, however, against ‘the obsession that they have the right to define the world order as they see fit and to impose stability and happiness from above” on countries such as Kosovo and Afghanistan.15 The new basis for Russian cooperation with other nations after September 11 will not likely be based solely on the reasoning’s of the new thinkers or their ideas because they are not influential in the shaping of Russian politics. The Russian economic decline affected the founders of new thinking in much the same way it did the rest of Russian society. The old Soviet system of higher education and progressive political research capabilities deteriorate with the economy of the country and the Russian state has yet to have the abilities to replace these institutions of intellectual thought. The current conception that national interests are supported by economic institutions and policies fits Russia’s international and domestic realities; therefore providing a healthier future economic outlook than new thinking proved to supply in the early 1990’s. For example, if Russia, join NATO to battle terrorism, its policy will be based upon its awareness of national economic interests, supported by influences from the business community and political institutions. Such a policy would not be cooperation simply for cooperation’s sake, as new thinking appeared to espouse, but for progressive economic interest. In June 1994, the seeds planted by new thinking continued to thrive as Yeltsin signed an agreement on partnership with other leaders of the European Union extending most-favored-nation status to Russia and reducing many import quotas. The new thinkers of the 1980’s and 90’s have little use in today’s Russian political machine although their concepts live on in a limited capacity. Still, this is a far-reaching progression from the old Soviet isolationist attitudes. A few of the new thinkers were top members of the political leadership. Today, they are not as influential in the same way, as they were in Gorbachev’s era. Their opinions regarding political, economic, and social interests continue to compete for influence in Russia’s turbulent political reality. Gorbachevs foreign policy won him much praise and admiration. For his efforts to reduce superpower tensions around the world, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Soon thereafter, he was demonized and denounced by the vast majority of the Russian populous for failed economic measures. The answer to why new thinking entered the Russian ideological mainstream at all lies in the fact that radical political circumstance often inspires radical political changes. The change the Soviet Union went through in the short period from 1985 to 1991 was certainly radical by any description. Rarely has the leadership of any civilization under the duress of the failures of its system attempted such a far-reaching concept as new thinking. The concept of new thinking started a process of thought that promises to be forever sustained in Russia, at least in some form, for the foreseeable future. Footnotes 1 Juviler, P. & Kimura, H. (1988). Gorbachev’s Reforms: U.S. and Japanese Assessments. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, p. 1 2 Juviler & Kimura (1988) p. 97. 3 Wallander, C. (Winter 2002). “Lost and Found: Gorbechev’s New Thinking.” The Washington Quarterly. Vol. 25, I. 1, p. 118. 4 Wallander (2002) p. 118. 5 Wallander (2002) p. 118. 6 Wallander (2002) p. 119. 7 Wallander (2002) p. 119. 8 Wallander (2002) p. 120. 9 Curtis, G. (Ed.). (July 1996). “Gorbechev’s First Year.” Russia: A Country Study [online]. Washington D.C.: Library of Congress. Retrieved 15 March, 2006 from < http://www.country-data.com/frd/cs/rutoc.html#ru0050> 10 Gretsky, S. (1997). “Russia’s Policy Toward Central Asia.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [online]. Moscow: Carnegie Moscow Center. Retrieved 15 March, 2006 from 11 Wallander (2002) p. 122. 12 Wallander (2002) p. 122. 13 Wallander (2002) p. 123. 14 Wallander (2002) p. 123-28. 15 Trenin, D. & Lo, B. (2005). “The Landscape of Russian Foreign Policy Decision-Making.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment. Bibliography Curtis, G. (Ed.). (July 1996). Russia: A Country Study [online]. Washington D.C.: Library of Congress. Retrieved March 15, 2006 from < http://www.country-data.com/frd/cs/rutoc.html#ru0050> Gretsky, S. (1997). “Russia’s Policy Toward Central Asia.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [online]. Moscow: Carnegie Moscow Center. Retrieved 15 March, 2006 from Juviler, P. & Kimura, H. (1988). Gorbachev’s Reforms: U.S. and Japanese Assessments. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Trenin, D. & Lo, B. (2005). “The Landscape of Russian Foreign Policy Decision-Making.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment. Wallander, C. (Winter 2002). “Lost and Found: Gorbechev’s New Thinking.” The Washington Quarterly. Vol. 25, I. 1, pp. 117-129. Read More