ABSTRACT
The guiding principle of Soviet foreign policy is the contention of legality, based not on Western international law, but as Bernard Ramundo points out, on a “new” international law, that of peaceful coexistence. The Soviet leaders, unwilling to provoke a war that could destroy their country and their system, must have come to the conclusion during the post-Stalin years that they could not achieve their goal by military means but rather by political warfare. Western Europe was the major battlefield of World War II. The Bolsheviks held genuine peace to be inimical to their aims, and the West, especially the United States, had to establish ways and means to counter Soviet policies. Western Europe remains the most important focus of Soviet foreign policy and Moscow, Rubinstein notes, “intends its stress on détente in Europe to enable it to play on intra-West European rivalries.
