SOME OPERATIONAL PRINCIPLES OF SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

By

Richard Pipes

Perhaps the best way to define the scope of this essay is negatively, by stating what it is not. Our purpose is not to lay bare the motives of Soviet foreign policy or its ultimate aspirations. These topics lie at the heart of the matter, of course, and cannot be entirely ignored; but, belonging as they do to the realm of national and elite psychology they are best set aside for separate treatment.1

Nor will our concern be with the narrower subject of Soviet techniques of negotiation. Although diplomats trained in the traditional school have good reason to look upon Russian (or, more precisely, Communist) methods of negotiating as in a class of their own, it is doubtful whether such methods actually exist.2 Frustrations experienced in negotiating with Communists derive from the fact that the latter often engage in talks in order not to reach an agreement but to attain some other, incidental objective, such as ascertaining how strong is their opponents' determination on a given issue, splitting hostile alliances, or influencing world opinion. When they intend to use negotiations in this manner, Communist diplomats indeed display an intransigence which can be mollified only by full acceptance of their terms, that is, by surrender of the principle of compromise which is the quintessence of negotiation.

However, whenever they happen to be interested in a settlement, Communist diplomats act in a traditional manner, efficiently and undeterred by difficulties. One need only recall the speed with which in 1939 the Soviet Union concluded its non-aggression treaty with Germany, or the relative ease with which the Communist bloc settled its outstanding difficulties with the West immediately after Stalin's death, once the new party leadership in Russia had concluded that a détente was in order. Responding to Eisenhower's "deeds not words" speech of April 16, 1953, in which the President called for a resolution of several major problems, among them Korea, Vietnam, and Austria, Communist diplomats negotiated in reasonable time mutually agreeable terms on issues which only a short time earlier had seemed to defy all solution. As a result, in July 1953 there was an armistice in Korea, in June 1954 an armistice in Indochina, and in May 1955 a long overdue

I have attempted to deal with this matter briefly in "Russia's Mission, America's Destiny: The Premises of U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy," Encounter, October, 1970. This subject is treated by a group of experienced negotiators in Raymond Dennett and Joseph E. Johnson, eds., Negotiating with the Russians (Boston, 1951), and in an amusing chapter in Heinz Pächter's Weltmacht Russland (Oldenburg-Hamburg. 1968), 372-377.

treaty with Austria. It certainly is no coincidence that shortly after President Nixon had announced he intended to pay a state visit to China, hoary disagreements affecting the status of West Berlin melted away and a workable draft of a four-power agreement could be hammered out. All of which suggests that if the West often faces excruciating difficulties negotiating with the Communists the fault lies not in different negotiating techniques. The Communists employ distinct methods of diplomatic intercourse only when they have in mind objectives other than negotiation and agreement.

One way to describe what we will be talking about is to borrow terms from the vocabulary of military science. The language of Soviet politics is permeated with militarisms: even the most pacific spheres of government activity become "fronts" which have to be "stormed", all-out "offensives" are launched to conquer internal difficulties, and even peace itself becomes the object of a "struggle". The martial language is appropriate, for, as will be noted shortly, Soviet theory does not distinguish sharply between military and political forms of activity, regarding both as variant ways of waging conflict which it regards as the essence of history. "Strategy" and "tactics" are useful in this connection, and have been employed. But even more accurate is a third term from the vocabulary of Soviet military theory, "the art of operations" (operativnoe isskustvo). Its origin apparently goes back to the 1890's, but it acquired special relevance in the 1920's, when Soviet experts, analyzing the record of World War I and of the Russian Civil War, concluded that neither "strategy" nor "tactics" adequately described warfare waged with mass armies under industrial conditions. They then created the concept "art of operations" to bridge the two. Since that time this concept has occupied an honored place in Soviet military thinking, and, indeed, some Soviet authorities credit Russian victories in World War II to its systematic application. If tactics describes the employment of troops on the battlefield, and strategy the overall disposition of all of one's forces, the "art of operations" denotes the fluid and dynamic element in military planning by virtue of which individual tactical moves are coordinated over period of time to promote the ultimate strategic objective, defeat of the enemy.

According to Soviet theorists, under conditions of prolonged modern warfare, victory requires a succession of interdependent operations, based on solid logistic support and synchronized to produce on the enemy mounting pressure which, attaining unbearable levels, eventually causes him to collapse. In the literature on the subject, there are just enough hints to indicate that the "art of operations" is derived mainly from analysis of the campaigns waged in World War I by General Ludendorff, whose masterful conduct of "total" war seems to have exercised a greater influence on Communist political practices than the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels combined. "The purpose of operations is the destruction, the complete annihilation of the vital forces of the enemy," states a recent Soviet handbook on the subject, paraphrasing an authority of the 1920's, "its method is the uninterrupted attack; its means, prolonged operational pursuit, which avoids pauses and stops, and is attained by a succession of consecutive operations, each of which serves as the transitional link toward the

ultimate goal, accomplished in the final, closing operation." 3 The whole concept, with its stress on coordinated, uninterrupted assault intended to bring mounting pressure on the enemy, admirably describes what is probably the most characteristic feature of Soviet foreign policy.

The subject is of great importance and deserves the kind of careful study given to Soviet military practices. Soviet foreign policy involves a great deal more than diplomacy: diplomacy is one of its minor instrumentalities and Soviet diplomats resemble more the bearers of white flags sent to cross combat lines than the staff officers or the combatants. But it is also more than mere military bluster. One cannot isolate from the total arsenal of Soviet foreign policy any one weapon and by neutralizing its sting hope to halt its thrust. To understand this policy one must understand its mode of operations. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on this remarkably ignored subject.

THE ART OF OPERATIONS

In an essay on creativity, Arthur Koestler observed that seminal ideas are born from bringing two premises belonging to two different mental fields to bear upon each other. Using this approach, Marxism may be said to owe its influence to a successful fusion of sociology with economics, and Freudianism to the grafting of medicine onto psychology. With this definition in mind, we may ascribe the significance of Leninism as an ideological force in the twentieth century to an innovative linking of politics with warfare-in other words, to the militarization of politics which Lenin was the first statesman to accomplish.

5

For psychological reasons which need not be gone into here, Lenin was most attracted in the writings of Marx and Engels not by the liberal and democratic spirit strongly in evidence there, but by the idea of class war. Peter Struve, who knew him well in his early political career, says that Lenin took to Marx's theory mainly because he found in it "the doctrine of class war, relentless and thoroughgoing, aiming at the final destruction and extermination of the enemy." Class war, of course, was and remains the common property of all socialist and anarchist movements of modern times. But to Lenin, more than to any other prominent radical of his period, it was a real, tangible thing: a daily, hourly struggle pitting the exploited against the exploiters and (after November 1917) what he defined as the "camp of socialism" against that of "capitalism" or "imperialism”. What to Marx and Engels was a means, became for him an end. His preoccupation as theorist was always with the methods of waging political warfare: anything that did not in some way bear on that subject, he regarded as harmful, or at best, as useless. All his thinking was militant. He was the first public figure to view politics entirely in terms of warfare, and to pursue this conception to its inexorable conclusion. Lenin read Clausewitz rather late in life (1915), but he

3 Voprosy strategii i operativnogo isskustva v sovetskikh voennykh trudakh, 1917-1940 gg. (Moscow, 1965), 13. Insight and Outlook (New York, 1949), especially Chapter XVIII, "The Eureka Process." 3 Cited in my book, Struve, Liberal on the Left, 1870-1905 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 134. 71-039-72- 2

immediately found him a most congenial writer. He referred to him often, praising him as a thinker whose ideas, as he once put it, have become "the indispensable acquisition of every thinking man." As one might expect, he especially admired Clausewitz's insistence that war and politics were not antithetical means of conducting relations among states but alternatives, chosen according to what the situation required. On one occasion, Lenin told a friend that "political tactics and military tactics represent that which the Germans call Grenzgebeit [adjoining areas]," and urged Communist party workers to study Clausewitz to learn the applications of this principle."

These historical and biographical facts require mention because the Soviet leadership in power since November 1917 has been thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Leninist politics. The reason lies not in the innate force of Lenin's ideas or the ability of any idea to be bequeathed intact from one generation to another. It lies in the fact that the Soviet leadership of today finds itself in a situation in all essential respects identical with the one Lenin had left on his death, that is, devoid of a popular mandate or any other kind of legitimacy to justify its monopoly of political power except the alleged exigencies of class war. The regime is locked in; and even if it wanted to extricate itself from its predicament by democratizing it could not do so because of the staunch opposition of the bureaucratic establishment to genuine political reform. The closed character of Russia's ruling elite, its insulation from the inflow of fresh human types and ideas by means of the principle of co-optation assures a high degree of ideological and psychological continuity. In this respect, the Soviet elite resembles a self-perpetuating religious order rather than what one ordinarily thinks of as a governing class. The growth of productivity, the rise in living standards, the spread of education, and the sundry other factors which some Western observers count on in time to liberalize the Soviet system have no bearing either on the internal position of the ruling elite or on its political outlook. Only a major upheaval-such as a prolonged and unsuccessful war, or a prolonged and unresolved feud among the leaders could alter the situation.

The Soviet government conducts a "total" foreign policy which draws no principal distinction between diplomatic, economic, psychological, or military means of operation. It also does not differentiate in any fundamental respect between domestic and foreign relations. This accounts for the virtual absence in the Soviet Union of a literature devoted to the theory of foreign relations. Every policy decision, after all, is made in the Politburo of the party. As a rule, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs (the incumbent, Andrei Gromyko, included) is not a member of the Politburo a fact which suggests what importance attaches to his office. The Soviet Union maintains a Ministry of Foreign Affairs with its diplomatic corps because other countries with which it deals happen to do so. It does not, however, charge the Ministry with the formulation of foreign policy. All important

V. I. Lenin, Sochineniia, 3rd ed., (Moscow. 1926-1937), xxx, 333. Admiration for Clausewitz is something the Bolsheviks and the Nazis have in common.

7 V. Sorin, "Marksizm, taktika. Lenin." Pravda, No. 1 (January 3, 1923), 5. On another occasion, Lenin wrote: "To have an overwhelming superiority of forces at a decisive moment in a decisive place-this 'law' of military success is also the law of political suc cess. ." Lenin, Sochineniia, XXIV, 635. Lenin's copious notes on Clausewitz are reprinted in Leninskii sbornik, xII (1931), 387-452.

foreign policy decisions are made in the Politburo and often even carried out by its own departments. The role of the Ministry is further whittled down by the practice increasingly to entrust foreign policy matters to organs of the police and intelligence. The KGB, through its "Foreign Directorate" (First Main Administration), and with the assistance of organs of military intelligence (GRU), may well have a greater voice in Soviet foreign policy, especially as it concerns the socalled Third World, than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Alexander Kaznacheev, a one-time Soviet diplomat stationed in Rangoon, states that among his hundred or more colleagues in the embassy, fewer than one-fifth actually worked for the Ministry and were responsible to the Ambassador; the remainder was employed by other agencies, mostly engaged in intelligence activities and reporting directly to Moscow.8 In contending with a foreign policy of such an unorthodox kind, the United States has had to charge its own Central Intelligence Agency with a variety of responsibilities exceeding its formal mandate. These activities have recently been restrained, to the visible relief of the KGB and other operational intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union which prefer to have this particular field all to themselves. The steady shift of the epicenter of US foreign policy management from the Department of State to the White House is probably part of the same process which earlier had led to the broadening of the CIA's functions, namely the need somehow to counter "total" Soviet policy with a "total" policy of one's own.

THE CORRELATION OF FORCES

When we say that Soviet policy is inherently militant we do not mean to imply it is necessarily belligerent. In the context of an ideology which regards armed conflict as only one of several instruments at the politician's disposal, militancy can assume a great variety of expressions. If those who take a "soft" line in regard to Soviet Russia tend to err in their estimate of Soviet motives and aims by making them appear more reasonable than they in fact are, the "hard" liners err only a little less seriously in their judgment of Soviet procedures, overestimating the role of warfare and neglecting other means of waging battle which Russia employs. In the decade that followed the end of World War II, American policy toward the Soviet Union, anchored as it was in the "hard" position, concentrated so exclusively on the Soviet military threat that when in 1954-1955 Russian strategy changed and "peaceful coexistence" replaced the head-on assault attempted under Stalin, American policy was thrown into a confusion from which it still has to recover.

Militancy rather means maintaining one's citizenry in the state of constant war-like mobilization, and exerting relentless pressure outside Russia's borders. The means used differ, depending on the circumstances.

One of the basic ingredients in the formulation of Soviet foreign policy is what Russian theoreticians call the "correlation of forces"

Cited in Sir William Hayter, Russia and the World (London, 1970), 18, 19.