ABSTRACT
The nature of the Soviet political system creates its own imperatives, which the leaders must heed and which may make the leaders' choice among foreign policy options more difficult and cumbersome than is the case in a democracy. In their turn, Leonid Brezhnev and his colleagues were especially insistent not only on preserving the party's role as the only source of political power, but also on recouping the narrower oligarchy's prerogative as final arbiter in policymaking. There is a Soviet equivalent of the US National Security Council, but it is presided over ex officio by the general secretary, and nothing indicates that it is more than an advisory body to the Politburo. Had the general international situation remained similar to that of 1972-1973, it is unlikely that the conservative-minded Brezhnev regime would have attempted such a daring innovation as projecting Soviet power into areas thousands of miles away from the USSR.
