ABSTRACT
Mikhail Gorbachev's basic idea of a restructuring started making a visible impact on Soviet foreign and security policy in 1987. The concomitant traditional tendency to prop up foreign policy by military power and its intimidating effects has increasingly isolated the Soviet Union and caused other states to form an ever expanding defensive front. The Soviet leadership made actions toward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries the focal point of their foreign policy. The Kremlin, though ready for concessions on battle tanks and artillery, demanded in turn considerably larger renunciations by NATO in fighter aircraft with operational ranges and naval units on the North Atlantic. The declared goal was to discredit the confrontation course allegedly steered by NATO and to make the coherence of the Western alliance, founded as it is on the basis of East-West confrontation, appear superfluous.
