ABSTRACT
Mikhail Gorbachev had to assert and maintain the primacy of politically determined interests and criteria in Soviet foreign and security policy and attempt to extend the scope of politically induced change across the East-West international agenda. In order to gauge the likely future relationship between the composition and course of the post-Soviet political leadership and the range of meaningful choice in Russian and Commonwealth foreign policy, it is important to delineate as carefully as possible the ways in which Gorbachev has exercised an impact on Soviet foreign policy. The crucial point is that all these US policies and actions, including the rhetorical and budgetary commitment to continued high levels of military spending, coincided with a kind of latter-day “scissors crisis” in Soviet foreign and security policy. One has to acknowledge the impact of the policies of the early Ronald Reagan administration, whatever the precise intentions of those who formulated its Soviet and arms control strategies.
