Yet one searches Schweizer's book in vain for the devastating impact of Reykjavik on the Soviet Union. Instead the reader finds suppositions about the impact of Star Wars rather than proof. For example, Schweizer recounts the discussions of John Poindexter (a member of Reagan's delegation) with Marshal Akhromeyev to demonstrate that the prominent Soviet military officer "had an abject fear of SDI."31 Schweizer also asserts, rather than proves, that "Gorbachev's willingness to agree to dramatic cuts [in his strategic and intermediate nuclear forces] and link them to strategic defense was further evidence of just how desperate Moscow was for relief from the West."32 Thus, Reagan's refusal to bargain away Star Wars was a crushing blow because "Soviet hopes of eliminating the SDI research program were dashed once and for all."33
As this paper will demonstrate, Schweizer's is an extremely poor, biased and incomplete history of the Cold War's culmination. But it merits the consideration given to it here because Richard Pipes, an extremely erudite and serious student of Russia's history, once wrote that Schweizer's book -- although it "lacks scholarly rigor" and is based upon interviews, "many of which cannot be verified" -- "comes closer to explaining the end of the Cold War" than Raymond Garthoff's extraordinarily researched book, The Great Transition.34
Pipes (a member of the CIA's "Team B," author of the alarmist and now thoroughly discredited article, "Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" and advisor to President Reagan during the first years of his first term) notes with approval that Schweizer "opens with three quotations from three high Soviet officials ... conceding publicly that Reagan's programs, such as the Strategic Defense Initiative, 'accelerated the decline of the Soviet Union.'"35
Lending further scholarly weight to the Star Wars argument is Martin Malia's book, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991. Malia wrote, "SDI posed a technological and economic challenge the Soviets could neither ignore nor match."36 He adds that "former Soviet military personnel and political analysts generally agree that the Soviet Union's inability to keep up its half of the arms race, in particular regard to SDI, was a principal factor in triggering perestroika."37
According to Malia, "the crucial turning point was the INF Treaty of 1987...Gorbachev bowed out of the Cold War essentially on the West's terms and without obtaining any concession on SDI. No doubt one reason he did so was that by 1987...the internal difficulties of perestroika had become acute."38
There's plenty of evidence, much of it emerging after Schweizer, Pipes and Malia offered their interpretations of events, to refute every claim made for Reagan and the Star Wars interpretation. First is the emerging evidence that in 1985, the Soviets undertook "a separate effort, code-named Protivodeistviye (Counteraction)...as an asymmetric response to SDI, aimed at improving the ability of ICBMs to survive against space-based weapons."39 That effort's greatest contribution was the Topol-M ICBM that was specifically designed to counter Star Wars.40
The Topol-M not only survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also the economic duress that plagued post-Soviet Russia during its first decade of existence. The first ten Topol-Ms were deployed in 1998. Ten more were deployed in 1999. Proponents of the Star Wars interpretation might want to reconsider their operating hypothesis, based upon that fact alone.
According to reports gathered by Nikolai Sokov, "Topol-M's warhead is precision-guided or uses other technology with the same effect ...this single-warhead ICBM carries more decoys and penetration aids than a ten-warhead Peacekeeper (MX). Reportedly, the warhead is hardened, and only a direct hit by an antimissile could stop it on the descending trajectory...Topol-M's booster is intended to reduce the duration and the altitude of the active (boost) phase of the trajectory. This was done specifically to avoid the impact of 'various-types' of antimissile defense systems, such as ultra-high-frequency emissions, lasers and so forth -- a clear reference to the 'exotic' 'Star Wars' space-based systems."41
With this evidence in mind, Mikhail Gorbachev's statement to President Reagan at Geneva, in November 1985, takes on added significance. Referring to Star Wars, Gorbachev said, "I think you should know that we have already developed a response. It will be effective and far less expensive than your project, and be ready for use in less time."42
In this context, Roald Sagdeev's assertion that "Marshal Akhromeyev and his people never attributed much to SDI's technical prospects."43 becomes more plausible than John Poindexter's. Thus, also gaining plausibility are the assertions of M.I. Gerasev (Institute for the USA and Canada), General M. A. Gareev, and V. V. Shlykov that denigrate SDI's significance.44
Finally, Professor Malia's interpretation of the INF Treaty does not withstand compelling evidence to the contrary. First, we now know that Andrei Sakharov -- who called Star Wars "a Maginot line in space" -- persuaded Gorbachev in February 1987 to avoid allowing his concerns about Star Wars to prevent him from negotiating the INF Treaty (if not the START treaty).45 Second, the incursion, not only into Soviet airspace, but into Red Square of Mathias Rust's Cesna airplane in May gave Gorbachev the excuse he needed to purge the military. Gorbachev subsequently remarked, "Let everyone here and in the West know where the power is -- it is in the political leadership, in the Politburo." Gorbachev had overcome a major obstacle to his pursuit of "mutual security."46
Third, and perhaps most significantly, immediately after the signing of the INF Treaty, Gorbachev and his Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze "stood up, beaming, and raised their arms straight up in a victory gesture."47
However, two other beliefs prevent such evidence about the Soviet collapse from receiving an unbiased hearing among missile enthusiasts. First, crediting Grobachev, and not Star Wars contradicts what many of America's defense and national security specialists consider an article of faith: the Soviet Union was a totalitarian system that was impervious to internal reform.
As Stephen F. Cohen has noted, the dominant view of the totalitarian school "held that 'no fundamental changes were likely, short of the violent destruction' of the Soviet system."48 Cohen quotes the following from the 1953 edition of 'the field's best textbook," Merle Fainsod's How Russia is Ruled: "The totalitarian regime does not shed its police-state characteristics; it dies when power is wrenched from its hands."49
During the 1960s and 1970s, the totalitarian school of Soviet history came under assault by a new generation of "Revisionist" historians. But on the eve of President Reagan's election, the totalitarian interpretation reemerged, thanks, in part, to an article ("Dictatorships and Double Standards") that Jeane Kirkpatrick published in the November 1979 issue of Commentary magazine. There she attempted to demonstrate that authoritarian regimes "are more compatible with U.S, interests" than totalitarian regimes, because they are more susceptible to "progressive liberalization and democratization." On the other hand, "the history of this century provides no grounds for expecting that radical totalitarian regimes will transform themselves."50
Obviously, those who subscribe to the totalitarian interpretation of Soviet history must look for some external cause when attempting to explain the Soviet Union's demise. That's why two of the most prominent members of the school, Richard Pipes and Martin Malia, turned to Reagan and Star Wars. And that's why so many lesser scholars and defense analysts persist in their belief, notwithstanding the substantial evidence to the contrary.
Yet, they would do well to recall the many conservatives who criticized Reagan, near the end of his administration, for creating a false euphoria and for giving the Soviet Union breathing space.51 Writing in Newsweek, a prominent conservative columnist, George Will, asserted that "Reagan has accelerated the moral disarmament of the West -- actual disarmament will follow."52
Obviously, Gorbachev's radical reforms demolish the totalitarian shibboleth. As Gorbachev scholar, Archie Brown, has observed, "from the spring of 1989 it is scarcely meaningful to describe the Soviet Union as a Communist system. It is not only that the greater part of Marxist-Leninist dogma had been abandoned by then -- and by the party leader himself -- but also that the most important defining characteristics of a Communist system, whether structural or ideological, had ceased to apply as a result of policies introduced during the period of radical reform which got seriously under way in 1987 and became more fundamental in 1988."53
More recently, Professor George W. Breslauer has concluded: "On his own terms, then, Gorbachev was successful in deligitimizing the inherited approach to political life at home and abroad and its hostility to a democratic political order and a post-Cold War international order. Indeed, such change may be his principal claim to fame as a transformational leader."54 Breslauer also observes that "Gorbachev went far to fulfill...many of the prescriptions of those scholars who have examined the lessons of evolutionary strategies for transforming regimes in non-Leninist settings."55
Perhaps even more devastating to the totalitarian interpretation, however, is the scholarship demonstrating that the Soviet Union began throwing off its quasi-totalitarian traits immediately after the death of Joseph Stalin. For example, Robert English's recent book, Russia and the Idea of the West, persuasively demonstrates the inexorable post-Stalin inroads made by Western ideas until they were sufficiently powerful to capture leaders such a Gorbachev and permit them to gain leading positions within the Soviet system.56
American "exceptionalism" is the second reason why missile defense enthusiasts doubt Gorbachev and credit Star Wars. The arguments of exceptionalists go something like this: "Why should a country on a mission from God sully itself with arms control agreements and other compromises with lesser nations, when its technological prowess will provide its people with the invulnerability necessary for the unimpeded, unilateral fulfillment of their historic destiny."57 Exceptionalists often are technological utopians, but foreign policy "realists" and, consequently, unilatreralists.
The only argument against American exceptionalism -- which became more virulent in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse and became known as triumphalism -- is to demonstrate that neither Reagan, nor Star Wars (and thus neither realism, unilateralism nor technology), but Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of "mutual security" brought an end to the Cold War.
We are quite aware, by now, of Gorbachev's pronouncements about mutual security as well as his actions to match deed with word. Not only his repudiation of the Brezhnev Doctrine or his historic announcement of a 500,000 man troop reduction, but his denunciation of the use of force during his historic speech at the United Nations in December 1988.
We know from Anatoly Chernyaev's memoirs that, in preparation for his meeting with Reagan at Reykjavic, Gorbachev explicitly articulated his concern for mutual; security: "We are by no means talking about weakening our security. But at the same time we have to realize that if our proposals imply weakening U.S. security, then there won't be any agreement. Our main goal now is to prevent the arms race from entering a new stage."58 Chernyaev adds, however, that at that same Politburo meeting, "directions were issued to focus on the quality of weapons in case we failed to prevent a new phase in the arms race."59
Most persuasive, however, is Raymond Garthoff's conclusion that "Gorbachev repeatedly took the initiative to go beyond American positions, to make greater sacrifices of Soviet military advantages than those called for by the United States, both in unilateral actions and in pushing the United States to go further in negotiations."60
Footnotes
33) Ibid. p. 276. Although Schweizer closes his book with the Reykjavik Summit, his account addressed "a flurry of hard blows to a weakened Soviet system." (p.284.), including challenges in the third world, an arms buildup, denial of Western technology and a drop in oil prices, that brought the collapse.
34) Richard Pipes, "Misinterpreting the Cold War: The Hardliners Were Right," Foreign Affairs, Jan./Feb. 1995.
36) Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991 (The Free Press, New York, 1994), p. 415.
39) Zaloga, p. 205. Nikolai Sokov, Russian Strategic Modernization: Past and Future (Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), p. 47.
42) Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York, Doubleday, 1995), p. 407
44) Ellman and Kontorovich, pp. 56-58
45) Richard Lourie, Sakharov: A Biography (Hanover, NH, Brandeis University Press, 2002), p. 358.
46) Susanne Sternthal, Gorbachev's Reforms: De-Satlinization through Demilitarization (Westport, CT, Praeger, 1997), p. 88.
47) George W. Breslauer, Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 76.
48) Stephen F. Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917 (Oxfore, UK, Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 25.
50) Jeane Kirkpatrick, "Dictatorships and double Standards," Commentary (November, 1979), p. 44.
53) Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 310
56) Walter C. Uhler, "Gorbachev's Revolution," The Nation (December 31, 2001).
57) Walter C. Uhler, "Missile Shield or Holy Grail?", The Nation (January 28, 2002).
58) Anatoly Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev (University Park, PA, Penn State Press, 2000), pp. 83-84.
60) Garthoff, p. 765.
© Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at MIPT, 2002