Soviet Policy Toward the United States and Western Europe: "Atlanticism" Versus the "Common House"

This chapter considers the probable adjustment between the "common house" and "Atlanticism" and clarifies some concepts related Soviet policy toward the United States and Western Europe. The first and most obvious rationale for the priority of the United States in Gorbachev's foreign policy lies in Moscow's claim to superpower status and political equality with the United States. The Soviet Union considered a normalization of relations with the United States to be important. Soviet political leaders and analysts have wholeheartedly endorsed the agreements reached between the Social Democratic party and the Socialist Unity party of East Germany on nuclear-free weapons zones in Germany and on the banning of chemical weapons in Central Europe. The discrepancies between Eastern and Western Europe are so glaring and the potential for erosion of party control in Eastern Europe so acute that a broad expansion of contacts across the divide continues to carry substantial risks for the Soviet Union.