U.S.-Soviet Relations: The Long Road Back
American presidents have usually inherited poor relations with the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower, of course, was confronted by the tensions of Korea and President Kennedy by the Berlin crisis. Lyndon Johnson was a temporary exception, but Richard Nixon inherited Vietnam and the Czech crisis. Gerald Ford had to deal with a faltering détente, and Jimmy Carter was embroiled in early disputes. In January 1981, Ronald Reagan found himself in much the same position as his predecessors, except that relations were worse than usual. Indeed, relations were frozen. Even the outgoing Administration was pessimistic. The departing American Ambassador to the U.S.S.R., Thomas J. Watson, Jr., summed up the prevailing gloom: "I don't think the West has any conception of how dismal the future looks for East-West relations."
William G. Hyland is currently a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He served in the Department of State in 1974-75 and as Deputy Director of the National Security Council Staff from 1975 to 1977.
American presidents have usually inherited poor relations with the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower, of course, was confronted by the tensions of Korea and President Kennedy by the Berlin crisis. Lyndon Johnson was a temporary exception, but Richard Nixon inherited Vietnam and the Czech crisis. Gerald Ford had to deal with a faltering détente, and Jimmy Carter was embroiled in early disputes. In January 1981, Ronald Reagan found himself in much the same position as his predecessors, except that relations were worse than usual. Indeed, relations were frozen. Even the outgoing Administration was pessimistic. The departing American Ambassador to the U.S.S.R., Thomas J. Watson, Jr., summed up the prevailing gloom: "I don't think the West has any conception of how dismal the future looks for East-West relations."
The incoming Administration, of course, was not likely to contest this appraisal, though its members analyzed the causes quite differently. They believed that Carter's reaction to the "most brazen imperial drive in history" by the Soviet Union had been too little and too late. The new President immediately set a new tone when he asserted that the Soviets reserved the "right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat." Other pronouncements from the new Cabinet secretaries and their minions echoed the President, though not as crisply or dramatically.
The basic Reagan attitude toward the Soviet Union was no surprise: the President himself had enunciated it over many years; he had challenged the Ford presidency over détente, and had campaigned vigorously in 1980 on a strong anti-Soviet platform. Moreover, there was a large body of scholarly and political literature that buttressed and elaborated his general concept of the nature of the Soviet threat, its future direction, and the proper American response.
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Written in anticipation of the third summit and the signing of the INF treaty, concludes that Gorbachev has adopted a basically defensive strategy and seems prepared to settle for a prolonged stalemate in terms of strategic superiority to the USA. This leads him to seek arms control agreements as a means of codifying his assumptions about security and the nuclear relationship. Washington's policy of selective containment is balanced by Moscow's policy of selective commitment.
Asks (1) why the postwar Soviet thrust for hegemony over Western Eurasia seemed a possible dream to Moscow (2) why the US reaction came so late. Answers that (1) it involved mixed impulses of fear and ambition deeply rooted in Russia's history, ideology and technological capacity (2) US foreign policy had a strong antagonism to the Old World balance-of-power politics. This came to an end with the Truman doctrine and the Marshall Plan. But the cold war which ensued will have a 'soft landing' rather than turn hot, because the USSR is not a great power in the new technological and educational revolutions which will be the bases of power in the future. The problems are now how to harness the new bases of power and how to prevent any one state from achieving hegemony. This picture of the modern world, largely constructed and painted by the USA, is slowly being perceived by the USSR.
What wise men had promised has not happened. What the damned fools predicted has actually come to pass," exclaimed Lord Melbourne during one of the British politician's fits of exasperation over the situation in Ireland. Well, viewing the post-World War II course of Soviet-American relations, one is tempted to echo the nineteenth-century statesman's sentiments.

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