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term. Discussions about the possible collapse of the Soviet Union tended to be mostly hypothetical in nature as opposed to a potential policy problem. Moreover, despite the goal of containment being a situation where the Soviet Union would be forced to abandon foreign adventure in order to address large internal problems or face the prospect of collapse, many analysts viewed the actual possibility of a Soviet collapse with alarm. After all, there were tens of thousands of nuclear weapons deployed across the fifteen Soviet republics. Successor regimes might not maintain control over them or the Soviet Union might devolve into civil war among nuclear armed foes. This clearly was a concern of President George H. W. Bush in 1991, as the Soviet Union fell apart. Bush gave a speech in Kiev, Ukraine, urging the Ukrainians—and. by implication, the other Soviet republics—not to rush headlong to dissolve the Soviet Union. Bush’s critics, who saw this as a retreat of United States’ support for freedom, caustically labeled this the “Chicken Kiev speech.”

THE “COMFORT” OF A BILATERAL RELATIONSHIP

In addition to the comfort drawn from the relative predictability of watching highly routinized Soviet military activities, there was another comfort drawn from the competitive bilateral relationship. There was a belief, probably in both capitals, that policy makers could influence one another’s actions. “If we do X, they will do A or B. We’d prefer B but they may do A.” This belief, which was borne out fairly often in diplomacy and military activities, gave the relationship a certain rhythm and assurance and thus a certain assumed level of predictability. It was exactly this sense of comfort that began to bother more hawkish U.S. national security experts in the late 1970s, who felt that U.S. policies failed to be confrontational enough. They felt that the edge had gone out of containment, that the main goal now was to accept the Soviet Union and its advances and find ways to accommodate it. Ronald Reagan, when running for president in 1976 and 1980, made it clear that he would reverse this policy of accommodation. This sense of comfort implied a certain level of unstated agreement on the boundaries of actions. There was an assumed sense of shared rationality, even if it did not extend to such philosophical issues as MAD.

This is akin to the “rational actor” model in social science, which requires a certain level of shared assumptions, values, and boundaries. This behavior may occasionally occur but it is not an entirely useful premise for intelligence analysis on an ongoing basis. There will be times when a policy maker makes a decision that seems entirely rational and beneficial but still oversteps when seen by others. In other words, individuals miscalculate. The Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan in December 1979 is a good example. In Moscow, the invasion seemed a logical next step after years of military advice and increased military presence in support of friendly regime just over the Soviet border. In other words, the Soviets could feel confident that they were acting within their acknowledged sphere of influence. The high level of protest encountered worldwide must have come as a shock to the Soviet leadership. President Jimmy Carter’s (1977-1981) reaction, however, also betrayed the sense of cold war comfort he had enjoyed. Having said at the outset of his administration that he did not want the Soviet Union to be the sole focus of his foreign policy, he now admitted that he had never understood the Soviet Union until then.

COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

Much of the controversy surrounding the U.S. intelligence record on the Soviet Union stems from the sudden Soviet collapse. Critics of intelligence performance argue that the demise deeply surprised the intelligence community, which had overestimated the strength of the Soviet state and thus missed the biggest story in the community’s history. Some people even contended that this intelligence failure was sufficient reason for a profound reorganization of U.S. intelligence.