ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Gorbachev's "new political thinking" entered a fundamentally new stage in late 1989 and early 1990. It focuses particularly on the challenge to the Soviets of reducing their reliance on military power in foreign policy. The chapter deals in a preliminary fashion with some of the international-theoretical implications of Soviet decline. The first conundrum to be faced by the new thinking is that the potential risks associated with reducing the Soviet Union's military potential are arguably increasing. In Europe in 1989 and 1990, the real costs, risks, and contradictions of Gorbachev's foreign policy and the "new political thinking" that undergirds it came to the fore. The nature of the domestic criticism of Gorbachev's foreign policy underwent a qualitative transformation at the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990. Up to then, foreign policy criticism took "classic" Soviet forms, insofar as it was couched within expressions of support for the general line of policy.
