Cold war or détente? The Soviet viewpoint

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Introduction by The Honorable J. William Fulbright

This book is about the most dangerous and controversial issue confronting the United States and its allies. It presents an in-depth analysis of Soviet-American relations by an important official of the Soviet government. Professor Arbatov is the director of the Institute of United States and Canadian Studies in Moscow, a full member of the Central Committee, and a deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet.

Professor Arbatov's views about the purposes, the intentions, and the actions of the United States and the Soviet Union will surely attract the interest of all students of foreign affairs, in and out of government, and I hope will inspire a process of introspection and self-examination by our political leaders.

For over thirty years, two schools of thought regarding Soviet-American relations, the cold-war school and the détente school, have competed for the allegiance of the American people. The critical question is whether the Soviet Union is an inveterate antagonist of the United States or a potentially reliable collaborator in trade, arms control, and in restraining regional conflicts.

Professor Arbatov, a strong supporter of the détente school, gives his analyses of not only the United States, but also China, Japan, Europe, Poland, Afghanistan, colonialism, human rights, and peace generally. Granting that Professor Arbatov presents Soviet actions and policy in the best possible light, nevertheless, his observations should be the subject of serious study and evaluation by the Congress, the administration, and the public. To understand the Russians, their purposes and their abilities, and

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decide how we should treat them is the most critical problem facing the nations of the West.

In his memoirs, Lord Grey, the foreign minister of Great Britain during World War I, wrote: ‘The lesson of European history is so plain. It is that no enduring security can be found in competing armaments and in separate alliances; there is no security for any power unless it be a security in which its neighbors have an equal share.... Nations are always making mistakes because they do not understand each other's psychology.’

Coming at this particular time, as a major escalation of the arms race is getting under way, this book should prompt a serious effort to understand the psychology of the Soviets and to find the means to give both our countries an equal share in the security that we seek. The urgency of our need to make this effort was reflected in Admiral Rickover's recent farewell statement before Congress, in which he warned that we are in danger of arming ourselves into oblivion.

To understand the psychology of the Soviets, it is essential that we comprehend thoroughly the consequences of their conviction that the United States requires as a condition of normal relations that they change the basic structure of their society. In a significant passage in Professor Arbatov's statement he says: ‘[I]n some key American foreign policy documents, like NSC-68, basic changes in our internal structure were put forward as a sine qua non for peaceful coexistence. Many actions in U.S. foreign policy in recent years reflect those guidelines. More than that - somewhere deep in the American political conscience there still lives the thought that we are something illegitimate, created not by God but by the Devil, and that our existence in its present form should be ended somehow.’

This belief of the Russians finds its counterpart in the often asserted view of the cold-war school in America that Russia is determined to destroy the American government and dominate the world. These mirror-image views of each other accelerate the escalation of the arms race to an irrational magnitude and threaten the survival of both countries. Under these conditions, each of the great powers is likely to be mistaken about the psychology of the other, and the result may be a nuclear catastrophe, which neither desires.

This unusual treatise presents serious and responsible Americans with the Soviet point of view. It is vitally important to our future that we make no mistake in understanding it.

J. William Fulbright served as senator from Arkansas from 1945 through 1974. He was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1959 through 1974. He is now counsel to the law firm of Hogan & Hartson in Washington, D.C.