Alexander L. George - Managing U.s.-soviet Rivalry: Problems of Crisis Prevention

Managing U.S.-Soviet Rivalry

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U.S. Policy in International Institutions: Defining Reasonable Options in an Unreasonable World, Special Student Edition, Updated and Revised, edited by Seymour Maxwell Finger and Joseph R. Harbert

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U.S.-Soviet Relations in the Era of Dtente, Richard Pipes

The Soviet Union in World Politics, edited by Kurt London

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Managing US.-Soviet Rivalry: Problems of Crisis Prevention

Alexander L. George, with contributions by Coit D. Blacker, Barry M. Blechman, George W. Breslauer, Gloria Duffy, Paul Gordon Lauren, Larry C. Napper, Janne E. Nolan, Alan Piatt, and I. William Zartman

This book examines the lessons of the U.S.-Soviet experiment with detente in the 1970s, with particular attention to the effort to develop a basis for cooperating in crisis prevention.- The authors, less concerned with who was to blame for the failure of dtente than with understanding the flaws in its conceptualization and implementation, have joined efforts to analyze the difficulties the two superpowers experienced in their attempt to avoid dangerous confrontations and crises that would damage the overall detente relationship.

The book includes case studies of several Middle East conflicts, the Angolan crisis of 1975, the Rhodesian conflict, the Ogaden war of 1977-1978, the abortive U.S.-Soviet talks on limitation of conventional arms transfers to third areas, and the Soviet combat brigade in Cuba. It also provides an analysis of preventive diplomacy as a strategy for mediating third-area conflicts and avoiding superpower confrontations and offers guidelines for reshaping U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and for moderating competition for influence in the Third World.

Alexander L. George is Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, Stanford University. His first book, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House (1956), written with his wife, Juliette L. George, is widely regarded as a classic study of the role of personality in politics. He is also author of Deterrence in Foreign Policy (with Richard Smoke, 1974), which won the 1975 Bancroft Prize, The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (with David K. Hall and William E. Simons, 1971), Propaganda Analysis (1959), The Chinese Communist Army in Action (1967), and Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy (Westview, 1980). The other contributors to this volume are political scientists, historians, foreign service officers, and members of other government and research institutions. They specialize in affairs relating to the Soviet Union, international security, and arms control.

by Alexander L. George

with contributions by
Coit D. Blacker
Barry M. Blechman
George W. Breslauer
Gloria Duffy
Paul Gordon Lauren
Larry C. Napper
Janne E. Nolan
Alan Platt
I. William Zartman

First published 1983 by Westview Press, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
George, Alexander L.
Managing U.S.-Soviet rivalry.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. United StatesForeign relationsSoviet UnionAddresses, essays, lectures.
2. Soviet UnionForeign relationsUnited StatesAddresses, essays, lectures.
I. Title. II. Title: Managing U.S.-Soviet rivalry.
E183.8.S65G446 1983 327.73047 82-16076

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-01976-1 (hbk)

In 1978 I was invited to participate in the Pugwash Workshop on "Political and Psychological Aspects of Crisis Management and Prevention" held in Geneva, Switzerland, in December of that year. The invitation provided an opportunity to reflect on the failure of efforts the United States and the Soviet Union had made during the high point of detente to moderate their competition in third areas in the interest of crisis prevention, a failure that had importantly contributed to the erosion of public support for detente in the United States.

The paper ("Towards A Crisis Prevention Regime in U.S.-Soviet Relations") that I presented at the workshop generated unexpectedly lively discussion. The idea that the two superpowers might cooperate more effectively in order to avoid diplomatic confrontations and dangerous crises in third areas drew a variety of critical observations. A number of workshop participants felt that superpower cooperation for crisis prevention might be a good idea in principle but was simply not attainable in practice. Some regarded the idea as overly idealistic and somewhat naive. Others dismissed it on other grounds, saying that given the marked deterioration of the detente relationship in recent years it was now too late to expect cooperation of this kind. These members of the workshop at least agreed that the objective of U.S.-Soviet cooperation to avoid dangerous forms of competition in third areas was desirable, if not feasible. Others, however, were not at all sure that superpower cooperation of this kind was a good idea because it might lead to some kind of U.S.-Soviet condominium that would operate at the expense of weaker states.