Changing Course: Ideas, Politics, and the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan

by Sarah E. Mendelson

Overview

Soviet foreign policy changed dramatically in the 1980s. The shift, bitterly resisted by the country's foreign policy traditionalists, ultimately contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. In Changing Course, Sarah Mendelson demonstrates that interpretations that stress the impact of the international system, and particularly of U.S. foreign policy, or that focus on the role of ideas or politics alone, fail to explain the contingent process of change. Mendelson tells a story of internal battles where "misfit" ideas—ones that severely challenged the status quo—were turned into policies. She draws on firsthand interviews with those who ran Soviet foreign policy and the war in Afghanistan and on recently declassified material from Soviet archives to show that both ideas and political strategies were needed to make reform happen.

Focusing on the Soviet decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, Mendelson details the strategies used by the Gorbachev coalition to shift the internal balance of power in favor of constituencies pushing new ideas—mutual security, for example—while undermining the power of old constituencies resistant to change. The interactive dynamic between ideas and politics that she identifies in the case of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan is fundamental to understanding other shifts in Soviet foreign policy and the end of the Cold War. Her exclusive interviews with the foreign policy elite also offer a unique glimpse of the inner workings of the former Soviet power structure.

Originally published in 1998.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691632254
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Series:	Princeton Studies in International History and Politics , #395
Pages:	158
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

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Changing Course

Ideas, Politics, and the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan

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By Sarah E. Mendelson

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1998 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-01677-1

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: How the New Thinkers Beat the Old Thinkers

THE ARGUMENT

The roar of the collapsing empire caught most who studied international relations and the Soviet Union by surprise. Scholars in these fields had focused for several decades on stability, both in the international system and in the Soviet Union. Many Western critics of Soviet foreign policy considered any retreat impossible. The continuation of the war in Afghanistan, for example, was viewed by most observers as fundamental to Soviet national interests.

While many fault scholars for their failure to predict such changes, this obscures the main puzzle. Observers were not necessarily wrong in their perceptions. Change in Soviet foreign policy and the withdrawal from Afghanistan occurred in spite of the fact that many decision makers continued to hold on to traditional Soviet conceptions about the international system. The interesting question is not why we failed to see all the changes coming. It is rather: how did they happen? How did policy makers and their advisors bring about such dramatic reversals of foreign policy as the withdrawal from Afghanistan? How did ideas that starkly challenged conventional wisdom—that were in fact "misfits"—become policies? In short, why did certain ideas win out over other ideas?

After the initial shock following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, scholars began sifting through the rubble and testing out various explanations. These efforts have spawned a debate—still in the early stages but likely to go on for many years—over various explanations of change in Soviet foreign policy and the end of the Cold War. Several approaches stress the role of ideas or lessons about the international system and superpower conflict. None of these approaches deal adequately, however, with what evidence shows to be the motivation for change: domestic political responses to economic and social conditions within the Soviet Union. In addition, messages from the international system were, at best, ambiguous: for many decision makers, they reinforced rather than challenged traditional conceptions of Soviet foreign policy. Other approaches that place the reasons for change within the state, stressing the role of needs and interests generated by domestic political considerations and the institutional changes that arose from these considerations, provide little sense of the importance of reformist thinkers and their ideas in influencing these changes. Yet the real story is one of both politics and ideas.

I argue that the withdrawal from Afghanistan and other subsequent reversals of foreign policy resulted because the Gorbachev coalition gained control of political resources and placed what had been misfit ideas about both domestic and foreign policies squarely on the political agenda. The Gorbachev coalition shifted the internal balance of power in favor of reformists and "new thinkers" through a series of political strategies previously unused by Soviet political elites attempting reform. Specifically, they actively encouraged the growth and empowerment of new constituencies pushing reformist, accommodationist beliefs, and simultaneously disempowered old constituencies advocating status quo agendas. They used new reformist constituencies to alter traditional institutions, such as the Communist Party, and to create new ones, such as a critical press. The leaderships mobilization of ideas and experts changed the internal balance of power and created the conditions necessary and sufficient for change in foreign policy, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I test existing explanations for change in Soviet foreign policy and the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan against my competing explanation by looking at new evidence gathered from my interviews with the men who ran Soviet foreign and domestic policy, and from archival documents of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and the Kremlin. I use this evidence to look at three time periods (1979–80, 1982–84, 1985–89) during each of which conditions in the international system were fairly static, but domestic conditions were highly varied. Between 1979 and 1989, there were four different leaders of the Soviet Union, and the ability of expert communities to influence policy making varied. The different time periods function as separate case studies. I find that there was no withdrawal from Afghanistan when the crucial cause, reformists changing the internal balance of power in their favor, is absent. For example, in 1979–80 and 1982–84, the war in Afghanistan began and continued despite the desire of some influential members of the leadership to withdraw troops; this was because the internal balance of power continued to favor the old thinkers. In the third period, however, 1985–89, the internal balance of power shifted in favor of the reformers with the help of the expert communities; one result was the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The mobilization of ideas and the change in the internal balance of power have implications that go beyond the changes in Soviet foreign policy. This explanation makes clear an important aspect of the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union: specific changes within the Soviet Union ultimately drove structural changes within the international system. Without an understanding of the domestic dynamic underlying the breathtakingly historic end of the Cold War, explanations are bound to be inaccurate; without the shift in the internal balance of power within the Soviet Union, few, if any, of the changes inside and outside the Soviet Union would have occurred.

This story also has implications for international relations theory in general. International relations scholars have looked at how ideas become institutionalized and change public policy, but few have looked at how ideas that challenge conventional wisdom or entrenched elites and institutions become public policy. In a world that is trying to reconstruct itself following the collapse of the old order, there are valuable lessons about the possibilities and the limits of, for example, democratization, or any endeavor that has as its goal the institutionalization of ideas that challenge deeply-entrenched patterns of thinking and behaving. The importance of new ideas and of domestic constituents who can alter the internal balance of power and make these previously unacceptable ideas become policies will be crucial as democrats struggle to institutionalize concepts such as "the rule of law" and "free and fair elections" in previously communist states.

The rest of Chapter 1 develops the argument about the mobilization of ideas and change in the internal balance of power. Chapter 2 discusses competing theories and hypotheses about the role of the international system and conditions inside the Soviet Union in explaining the great change in Soviet foreign policy in the 1980s. Chapter 3 explores the first case period, outlining the incremental decision making in 1979 that led to the escalation in Afghanistan. Chapter 4 details Gorbachevs initial mobilization of reformist experts in the second case period, 1982–84, as the war continued in Afghanistan. The third case, in Chapter 5, focuses on the way in which the Gorbachev coalition altered traditional institutions of power and created new ones with the help of reform-minded experts in the years 1985 through 1989. It highlights how the withdrawal and other reformist ideas finally got placed on the political agenda after the internal balance of power had shifted in favor of the reformers. Chapter 6 explores further conclusions from this case and implications for other cases.

DEFINITIONS

In this story, the focus on politics is largely internal to the state. "Politics" includes not only power-consolidating strategies and coalition building but also the role of reformist ideas and the empowerment and legitimation of policy entrepreneurs in the policy process. The roles of experts and ideas are considered in terms of the political environment in which they existed. The timing and nature of experts' advice given to the leadership partly explain changes in policy. But without the convergence of interests and the diffusion of ideas between the specialist network and the leadership, there would be no story at all. Ideas about reform would still be circulating in institutes in Novosibirsk, Moscow, and Leningrad with little impact on policy were it not for the strategies implemented by Gorbachev and his advisors for getting the ideas on the political agenda. What follows then is an examination of the interplay of the ideas, the people who voiced the ideas, and the political processes through which the ideas were institutionalized and the people empowered.

The political process by which the leadership selects and promotes ideas and policies is one main determining force in this story. Here it involved coalition-building, personnel change, and various other power-consolidating strategies inside and outside traditional institutions that the leadership used to alter the internal balance of power. Ideas—that is, the knowledge, values, beliefs, and expectations that a network of specialists empowered by the leadership brought to bear on the political agenda—are the other determining force; neither the ideas alone nor the political process independently determined policy changes. It was the combination of the reformist ideas and the political strategies that brought about the change in Soviet foreign policy.

New ideas about domestic and foreign policies threw into relief various problems inherent in old decisions. Domestic reform could not be seriously undertaken as long as the Cold War continued as it had, when the priority of the old thinkers had been to wage competition with the outside world. The war in Afghanistan was a symptom of such competition. The urgency of domestic reform and the consequent need for better relations with the external world made, therefore, the need to withdraw from Afghanistan salient.

The state of the internal balance of power in the Soviet Union directly determined the leadership s ability to get issues placed on the political agenda as well as others' ability to keep issues off the agenda: power involved both the ability to get things done and the ability to prevent things from being done. For ideas that did not fit previous conceptions of either domestic or foreign policy, the state of the internal balance of power had particular relevance. The political possibility for change would not increase until after: (1) the mobilization of members of reformist expert communities that occurred before Gorbachev came to power; (2) massive personnel changes in the Central Committee, the Politburo, and other main institutions that took place after Gorbachev came to power; and (3) the empowerment of specific members of the expert communities as an alternative source of political support, once Gorbachev had consolidated his power inside traditional institutions. Reformers helped alter political institutions so that, eventually, new thinking could fit onto the policy agenda.

The relationship of power between the leadership and the experts flowed two ways; this is fundamental to understanding how policy changed in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and led to additional policy changes in the 1990s. Gorbachev needed and cultivated the support of the specialist network, because it helped him legitimize and publicize the multitude of economic and social pressures bearing down on the Soviet Union. Many of the ideas that Gorbachev endorsed and promoted in the late 1980s including specific ideas regarding Soviet-Third World relations and change in foreign policy, originated with the specialist advisors years before the ideas became policy.

In order to win battles against the old order, reform-minded experts had to have access to resources, that is, to a base from which to wage battles. In this sense, the relationship of power and knowledge flowed the other way as well. Many of the specialist advisors benefited from contact with the leadership by being given or by acquiring public platforms from which to articulate and disseminate their ideas. In addition, following the elections to the Congress of People s Deputies in March 1989, several members of the specialist network gained independent voices as deputies in the Supreme Soviet. Some went on to run as deputies in the first parliamentary elections in Russia in December 1993. With anonymity cast aside, these men and women changed the climate of ideas. By the early 1990s, thanks to the changed environment and various new institutions (such as a critical press and a nascent legislative branch of government), advocacy and access to resources in the Soviet Union were no longer exclusively controlled by the leadership. One result was that reform spun out of the control of the leadership and became, in essence, a revolution.

ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS

The most frequently iterated answers as to why Soviet foreign policy changed, and specifically why the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, emphasize the role of external determinants such as ideas or lessons about the international system that Soviet leaders learned as a result of U.S. policy. The evidence gathered in this book, however, shows that U.S. policy in Afghanistan did not cause the withdrawal of Soviet troops. For example, the infamous "Stinger" missiles supplied by the United States to the Afghans who were fighting the Soviets became operational long after many in the Soviet leadership had already decided that troops should be withdrawn, but just as these reformers were struggling politically at home against old thinkers to get this issue on the political agenda. This tells us useful things about the larger process of change: actors in the international system made it more difficult and not easier for the new thinkers to get their accommodationist ideas turned into policies. The Gorbachev coalition was successful in its efforts to change foreign policy despite and not due to the fact that the rhetoric and policies of the United States in the early 1980s confirmed the perceptions of the most confrontational old thinkers in the Soviet Union.

To understand how the Gorbachev cohort was able to get controversial ideas on the political agenda I examine ideas in relation to the political context in which they existed and attempt to assess the conditions under which ideas influenced this political context. The case of Soviet reform in the 1980s and particularly the withdrawal from Afghanistan suggests that the role of ideas in policy making is highly complex and nuanced. Ideas function in different ways at different times. Sometimes they simply justify the actions of policy makers. In this case, sometimes they became weapons in domestic political battles. This case will show, however, that sometimes ideas truly guide and shape policy. During the period 1985–89, for example, reformist ideas about domestic policy guided leaders making domestic policy and were used to justify change in foreign policy.

My focus on expert communities in the Soviet Union in the 1980s departs in several ways from earlier works. Most important, I am assessing conditions under which ideas that do not fit previous constructs get put on the political agenda. This contrasts with earlier work where ideas get on the agenda because they in some way fit existing structures or old ideas.

In addition, the conditions under which expert communities are likely to be influential arise more explicitly from domestic political conditions than in earlier works. Earlier work has emphasized the international or "transnational" aspect of "learning" from expert communities. Because of the opaque nature of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, I focus on identifying conditions under which expert communities are likely to affect policy in their own country rather than the conditions under which they influence policy in other countries. I find that the implementation of ideas and the influence of expert communities were highly dependent on access to the political leadership and the salience of the ideas to the leadership. In situations where ideas severely challenge the status quo—where ideas are misfits—the ability of the political leadership to muster political resources is especially important.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface: Encounters with a Declining Power

Abbreviations

Ch. 1 Introduction: How the New Thinkers Beat the Old Thinkers 3

Ch. 2 Explaining Change in Soviet Foreign Policy: Three Competing Arguments 18

Ch. 3 Escalation in Afghanistan, 1979-1980: A Case of Old Thinking 39

Ch. 4 The Groundwork for Change, 1982-1984: Old Thinkers Rule but New Thinkers Are Mobilized 65

Ch. 5 Changing the Political Agenda, 1985-1989: New Thinkers Gain Control of Political Resources 92

Ch. 6 Conclusion: The Importance of Ideas and Politics in Explaining Change 124

Index 133

Editorial Reviews

This study should serve as an antidote to the argument that the cold war was won by American foreign policy, a position that mistakenly dismisses the critical importance of domestic Soviet politics that Mendelson skillfully treats.
— Political Science Quarterly

Richard L. Russell