ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to concentrate on the analytical and intellectual strands of contemporary Soviet foreign policy, as a way of clearing the ground for the broader discussion of Soviet policy and Soviet-American relations to which it stands as antecedent. One's analysis of the international system is likely to be related in significant ways to one's attitude to the internal distribution of power and resources within the USSR. The "new political thinking" may be seen as a determined effort by the Mikhail Gorbachev leadership to redefine conceptually, as well as through a process of political interaction, the nature of the international environment facing the USSR and the range of appropriate Soviet choices in foreign and security policy. Taken together, and in light of the analytical background with its roots in the Leonid Brezhnev and Nikita Khrushchev periods, one may even speak of the emergence of a new Soviet theory of international relations.
