ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on party and government official perceptions of the role of the United States in world politics. The ruling social class and power elite in the United States is no longer interpreted as the main adversary in world politics, who has to be fought against, weakened, and isolated by all means short of major war. Soviet politicians see world politics much more determined by national interests than by common system interests of the capitalist or imperialist as well as of the socialist world. The Soviet leadership perceives also the relative decline of American influence in world politics. Cooperation, arms control, adjustment of Soviet national interests to those of the United States become the primary goals of Soviet foreign policy. The new interpretation of world politics assumes a much higher degree of stability, flexibility, and modernization capability of capitalism than was admitted in traditional Marxist-Leninist perception.
