Foreword by Curt Gasteyger

Summary

There are many signs and. declarations that the Soviet Union under Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev intends to enter into a new era in terms of both reforms at home and new initiatives abroad. The two are obviously interlinked: the extent and success of the former will in many ways determine the credibility and persuasiveness of the latter. Nobody, not even Gorbachev himself, knows whether the Soviet system is capable of the kind of internal and economic reforms that will make her, above and beyond the military realm, a genuine world power. One thing, however, is clear: Gorbachev and his supporters have recognized that military power alone is not sufficient anymore – if it ever was – to justify their country's claim to global status and to respond to the many challenges and demands of the outside world that require everything except a military answer. They now acknowledge global interdependence and the fact that the Soviet Union is not exempt from but inextricably tied to it.

It would indeed be a revolution in Soviet foreign policy if the Soviet Union accepted such linkage to, and responsibilities for, the present international order which, ever since her creation in 1917, she has rejected as immoral and whose doom she has predicted.