Introduction

This chapter aims to analyze Western policies, and policy objectives and choices, with respect to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the light of changes taking place there. While that may seem a highly routine undertaking, it is, in fact, a somewhat adventurous task, for Western discussions of relationships with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and of the policies that flow from those discussions, tend to be cast almost exclusively in terms of West-West considerations. Specialists in Western affairs suffer from the availability of so much information that it becomes increasingly difficult to master it, but they are as much shaped by the language and cultural characteristics of the objects of their study as their counterparts. They are just as specialized in their research and in their contacts. An interesting degree of symmetrical action-reaction in the evolution of the Eastern and Western security systems also emerged in the course of the project.