ABSTRACT
The perils of writing a book on ‘Soviet Foreign Policy Today’ in the Gorbachev era are self-evident. Things are changing so rapidly in Soviet foreign and domestic affairs that there is a very real danger that conclusions applicable ‘today’ have a high probability of no longer being relevant tomorrow. To avoid leaving the book entirely hostage to the vagaries of Kremlin politics or other possible sources of change, I have tried to locate Gorbachev’s new political thinking and the policies associated with it in the broader context of the evolution of Soviet foreign policy, particularly in the Brezhnev era, when the institutional and ideological parameters with which Gorbachev has had to operate were largely established. This approach admittedly has its dangers. Concentrating too heavily on bygone institutions and practices may leave the observer unprepared for or skeptical of the magnitude of the changes-the sharp breaks with the past-that Gorbachev has boldly sought to introduce. On the other hand, it does help to put those changes into perspective, by examining what it is he has been trying to change and why he has failed in his attempts to do so.
