International Leverage on Soviet Domestic Change

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that the success of Gorbachev's domestic reforms would probably enhance Western security, but that there is nothing the West can do to make this outcome more likely. This conventional wisdom is right on the first count, but wrong on the second. The author supports his conclusion by three bodies of evidence: the effect of the international environment on the domestic politics of great powers in general over the past century; the history of the Soviet Union in particular; and the current constellation of political forces in Gorbachev's Russia.