Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [179]
The defenders of U.S. intelligence performance are, in part, correct. Intelligence provided numerous stories about the gross inefficiencies of the Soviet system, many of them anecdotal but too many to ignore. Insights into the sad realities of the Soviet system grew with the beginning of on-site inspections of Soviet intermediate nuclear forces (INF) bases in 1988. But few, if any, analysts compiled the anecdotal accounts into a prediction that the Soviet state was nearing collapse. It was weak; it might even be tottering. But no one expected that the Soviet Union would suddenly—and, most important, peacefully—pass from the scene. At least two factors were at work. First, most U.S. analysts working on the Soviet Union could not bring themselves to admit that the center of their livelihood might disappear, or that it was as weak politically as it turned out to be. Such a conclusion was inconceivable. They concentrated on the perils and pitfalls of reform but did not consider the possibility of collapse. Also, given the past brutality of Soviet (and Russian) governments, the idea of a peaceful collapse seemed impossible, leading to violent scenarios too horrific to contemplate. Second, analysts failed to factor into their calculations the role of personalities, particularly that of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party (the most powerful position) in 1985.
The difficulty in assessing Gorbachev should not be underestimated. He came to power through the usual Politburo selection process. Like each new Soviet leader before him, Gorbachev was an orthodox Soviet communist, promising reforms to make the admittedly inefficient state work more effectively. Eduard A. Shevardnadze, Gorbachev’s foreign minister, reveals that at a certain point they both admitted that fixing the economy would require something more basic than tweaking reforms. Even while accepting this fact, Gorbachev remained committed to the basic forms of the Soviet state, not understanding that any true reform was, by definition, revolutionary. Only over time did Gorbachev come to these conclusions, and he could not accept their ultimate implications. In other words, he did not know where his reforms would lead. Should the intelligence community have known better than Gorbachev himself?
Many intelligence analysts were also slow to pick up on Gorbachev’s approach to most of his foreign policy problems—arms control, Angola, even Afghanistan—which was to liquidate them as quickly as possible to be free to concentrate on more pressing domestic problems. Nor did many correctly analyze that the Soviet Union would acquiesce in the collapse of its European satellite empire. The satellite empire dissolved peacefully in 1989, as a few satellite leaders made efforts to liberalize, which led to the dissolution of the old order in all of the satellites. Czechoslovakia, maybe. But East Germany? Never. Again, the degree to which this was knowable remains uncertain. Ironically, Gorbachev succumbed to the premises of containment as described by George Kennan forty years earlier. Stymied abroad, Gorbachev had to face the manifold problems he had at home.
The factors that went into Gorbachev’s thinking or into the sudden Soviet collapse remain unknown. Did the U.S. defense buildup under President Ronald Reagan convince Gorbachev that he needed to strike some deals with the United States or be outpaced and outspent and face even deeper economic ruin? Shevardnadze suggests that the answer is yes. Some believe that President Ronald Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was an important spur to arms control, not because of any near-term change that SDI might effect in the military balance but because it brought home to Soviet leaders their country’s weaknesses in technology, in computers, and in wealth. One of the ways to avoid economic ruin was to strike