Читать «Несистематический словарь. Русско-английский, англо-русский» онлайн - страница 464
Admin
many in the Soviet foreign policy establishment as ―a moral as well as strategic opportunity‖ that
455
it was, as Peter Rodman says in his contribution, for much of the Cold War. Working in the
Soviet foreign ministry, I witnessed this ―third world fatigue‖ and the declining interest in third
world influence among officials at all levels in the second half of the 1980s. The Soviet Union
made a serious effort to resolve or disengage from the conflicts in the third world and, as
Rodman points out, the Reagan and Bush administrations accepted Gorbachev's good faith and
sought negotiated outcomes to the conflicts then raging in various parts of the world.
There is no doubt that no country — certainly not the Soviet Union — could indefinitely bear the
burden of the geopolitical obligations assumed under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. The
Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan may be seen as a good though by no means perfect
example of ―the art of letting go‖ with dignity. In hindsight, a more cooperative attitude on the
part of the United States both in the negotiating process and in the post-withdrawal period would
have served the best interests of everyone. When the United States showed little interest in such
cooperation, Gorbachev suggested to Secretary of State James Baker in May 1989 that ―perhaps
we should let the Afghans stew in their own juices for some time.‖ Later, however, Afghanistan's
fate was largely left in the hands of Pakistan's military intelligence service — a course chosen by
two US administrations with well-known consequences. The lesson to be learned from this is
that neglecting the third world agenda may be dangerous.
Of even greater importance than the disengagement from regional conflicts was the decline in
the importance of the superpowers' nuclear arsenals. Indeed, as Robert L. Hutchings observes in
his essay, ―the vast American and Soviet nuclear arsenals were becoming increasingly irrelevant‖
even to the realities of the late Cold War and certainly, one might add, to the post-Cold War
environment that both sides were looking forward to at that time. The negotiations on arms
control produced two seminal agreements that are still in effect — the INF and START treaties.
Even this achievement, however, is often disputed today in Russia, for reasons that are described
cogently in Alexei Arbatov's contribution to this book. In fact, however, the two treaties
constitute a legacy that Russia has found to be fully consistent with its best interests, successfully,
insisting on the reaffirmation of the START-1 treaty in the nuclear disarmament agreements
concluded by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin in May 2002.
The story of the arms control negotiations has been told many times, with little disagreement