{Soviet Foreign Policy [continued]}[7th April 1991]

[Redbook9:46][19910407:1231i]{Soviet Foreign Policy [continued]}[7th April 1991]

19910407.1231 (Sun[day])

[continued]

‘The fact is* that by 1986, Soviet efforts to regain the initiative in Third World conflicts were failing, most conspicuously in Afghanistan, where U.S.-supplied Stingers were turning the tide of the battle. Work on [the] S[trategic] D[efense] I[initiative], meanwhile, was progressing steadily. At the Reykjavik summit in October 1986, Gorbachev made an unsuccessful last-ditch attempt to use arms control pressure to force Reagan to abandon it.

‘Under the circumstances, something clearly had to be done to slow the relentless shift of the “correlation of forces” in the West’s favour. Gorbachev’s answer to this, as well as to the problem of domestic stagnation, was, in part, not very different from Lenin’s in an earlier era: a policy of “peredyshka”** or strategic retreat. However, for a variety of reasons, including hidden disarray and self-doubt within the Communist movement itself, the retreat went much further than Gorbachev, or certainly his early supporters in the military, had originally planned.’

***

*[See last previous ts entry]

**[1921]

***[ibid] T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] 4589, 19910315:6, ‘Soviet Military Paradoxes: Has the Kremlin really become more defensive-minded?’ P. Glynn, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, & author of ‘Closing Pandora’s Box: A History of Arms Control.’

[PostedBlogger23042024]