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Soviet Union [USSR] Foreign Policy of a Superpower
A major concern of Khrushchev's successors was to reestablish
Soviet primacy in the community of communist states by undermining
the influence of China. Although the new leaders originally
approached China without hostility, Mao's condemnation of Soviet
foreign policy as "revisionist" and his competition for influence
in the Third World soon led to a worsening of relations between the
two countries. Sino-Soviet relations reached a low point in 1969
when clashes broke out along the disputed Ussuri River in the Far
East. Later the Chinese, intimidated by Soviet military strength,
agreed not to patrol the border area claimed by the Soviet Union;
but strained relations between the two countries continued into the
early 1980s.
Under the collective leadership, the Soviet Union again used
force in Eastern Europe, this time in Czechoslovakia. In 1968
reform-minded elements of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
rapidly began to liberalize their rule, loosen censorship, and
strengthen Western ties. In response, Soviet and other Warsaw Pact
troops entered Czechoslovakia and installed a new regime. Out of
these events arose the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, which warned
that the Soviet Union would act to maintain its hegemony in Eastern
Europe
(see Soviet Union USSR - Soviet-East European Relations
, ch. 10). Soviet
suppression of the reform movement reduced blatant gestures of
defiance on the part of Romania and served as a threatening example
to the Polish Solidarity trade union movement in 1980. But it also
helped disillusion communist parties in Western Europe to the
extent that by 1977 most of the leading parties embraced
Eurocommunism, which freed them to pursue political programs
independent of Moscow's dictates.
Soviet influence in the developing world expanded somewhat
during this period. New communist or Marxist governments having
close relations with the Soviet Union rose to power in several
countries, including Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua. In the
Middle East, the Soviet Union vied for influence by backing the
Arabs in their dispute with Israel. After the June 1967 War, the
Soviet Union rebuilt the defeated Syrian and Egyptian armies, but
it suffered a setback when Egypt expelled Soviet advisers from the
country in 1972 and subsequently entered a closer relationship with
the United States. The Soviet Union retained ties with Syria and
supported Palestinian claims for their right to an independent
state. But Soviet prestige among moderate Muslim states suffered in
the 1980s as a result of Soviet military activities in Afghanistan.
Attempting to shore up a communist government in that country,
Brezhnev sent in Soviet armed forces in December 1979, but a large
part of the Afghan population resisted both the occupiers and the
Marxist Afghan regime. The resulting war in Afghanistan continued
to be an unresolved problem for the Soviet Union at the time of
Brezhnev's death in 1982.
Soviet relations with the West first improved, then
deteriorated in the years after Khrushchev. The gradual winding
down of the United States commitment to the war in Vietnam after
1968 opened the way for negotiations between the United States and
the Soviet Union on the subject of nuclear arms. After the Treaty
on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons was signed in July 1968,
the two countries began the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT)
in 1969. At the Moscow Summit of May 1972, Brezhnev and President
Richard M. Nixon signed Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the
Interim Agreement on the limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms.
Both agreements essentially froze the deployment of strategic
defensive andd offensive weapons. A period of détente, or
relaxation of tensions, between the two superpowers emerged, with
a further agreement concluded to establish ceilings on the number
of offensive weapons on both sides in 1974. The crowning
achievement of the era of détente was the signing in 1975 of the
Helsinki Accords, which ratified the postwar status quo in Europe
and bound the signatories to respect basic principles of human
rights. But even during the period of détente, the Soviet Union
increased weapons deployments, with the result that by the end of
the 1970s it achieved parity or even superiority in strength
compared with the United States
(see Soviet Union USSR - Arms Control and Military Objectives
, ch. 17). The Soviet Union also heightened its
condemnation of the NATO alliance in an attempt to weaken Western
unity. Although SALT a second agreement was signed by Brezhnev and
President Jimmy Carter in Vienna in 1979, after the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan the Carter administration withdrew the agreement
from consideration by the United States Senate, and détente
effectively came to an end. In reaction to the Soviet involvement
in Afghanistan, the United States imposed a grain embargo on the
Soviet Union and boycotted the Summer Olympics in Moscow in 1980.
Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union continued
up to Brezhnev's death.
Data as of May 1989
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