24/7 Customer support here

Brezhnev and Khrushchev. Discuss their foreign policy.

   Khrushchev was believed to be one of the calm leaders of the Soviet Union. This is displayed in the number of crises and developments which occurred in the near decade he was in rule of the Soviet Union. These can be loosely pinpointed as the 1955 signing of the Warsaw Pact, the Hungarian predicament of 1956, the Berlin ultimatum in 1958, the Sino-Soviet split and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. In this era Khrushchev also attempted to develop the soviet standing in the newly liberated third world, however I will focus on relations with the West, the US and China in answering this question.

   In order to contemplate the success of Khrushchev’s foreign policy, it is first important to determine his personal views and his ideological outlook which coloured his policies. Khrushchev has been described in many ways, from a ‘colourful, impulsive individualist… the bold iconoclastic reformer… the ambitious adventurer’[3] to a ‘hare-brained schemer’[4] However, most accounts agree on the fact that he was passionate about his foreign policy, taking active and visible interest in all such affairs[5]. He certainly was an individual and from the beginning set out to destalinise the system and pursue a more active role in world leadership. This policy was to gain him enemies as many other leaders did not appreciate his overbearing and personalised conduct of foreign policy[6]; however, he was accepted as the ‘preponderant and almost exclusive spokesman in foreign policy’[7] He aimed to achieve a working relationship with the capitalist West in order to improve socialist standing in the world. This peaceful coexistence was interrupted periodically by his struggle with maintaining communist unity in the soviet-bloc as well as in China, and actions in these areas made it hard for the West to put a great degree of trust into a communist leader.

   If peaceful coexistence was Khrushchev’s main aim in foreign policy, then we must look at events which occurred during his time in office and judge whether or not these could be deemed as a success relative to this aspiration. He believed that peaceful coexistence ‘could and should develop into peaceful competition for the purpose of satisfying man’s needs in the best possible way’.[8]

   Firstly, the signing of the Warsaw Pact in 1955 may seem on the surface to be a positive action for diplomatic relations, but then one must consider that it was signed as a counter-attack against the formation of NATO in the West. Much of Khrushchev’s foreign policy moves were conducted in an offensive manner, as a result of a move made which the Soviet Union would perceive as a threat. By 1964 the Eastern European-bloc had involved into an imperialist system with each country being a member of the Warsaw Pact[9]. Moscow tolerated some experimentation with governmental systems, but expected communist ideology to remain firm.

   This is why the problems in Hungary were tackled so forcefully, and so with regards to the preservation of communist rule in Eastern Europe, was a success. The reason for popular dissent in Eastern Europe at this time was due to Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ of 1956 in which he denounced Stalin and displayed his hopes for fundamental reform. In October an armed revolt became the consequence of a demonstration in Hungary, after a more liberal government headed by Nagy had come to power. Soviet troops felt it was necessary to intervene. Khrushchev believed the situation was too deteriorated to settle peacefully, particularly when Nagy decided to remove Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. Khrushchev’s reaction here was fundamentally defensive. He feared the loss of the Soviet-East European bloc and felt the need to maintain security.

   However, The American reaction to this would lead us to believe that this may not have been a diplomatic success. Far from the view of Khrushchev that such matters were internal and should not affect the pursuit of peaceful coexistence, the US were quick to take the crisis as an indication of the mounting Soviet aggression and so placed medium-range missiles directed at the USSR in Turkey, Iran, Japan and West Germany, and then rejected a Soviet plan for a nuclear free zone in central Europe[10].

   The United States was one of the biggest problems for the Soviet Union. Khrushchev was keen to maintain peaceful relations with the US, but would not compromise his hard-line Socialist intentions to do so. As Rubinstein tells us Khrushchev ‘inched toward a limited accommodation of the West, based on the preservation of the territorial status quo’.[11] The US would not turn a blind eye to events in Western Europe and so any crises in the West due to Soviet intervention was likely to cause tension with the US.

   One of the main points of tension for US-Soviet relations in Khrushchev’s era was West Germany and Berlin. He opted to press the issue to the US in an attempt to resolve it. He feared that the West was going to give Germany nuclear weapons which would be a threat to the Soviet regime. So in 1957 he gave the US an ultimatum. Either they sign a treaty with Germany, or the USSR would do so and East Germans would be free to close access to Berlin. Even though this ultimatum was not a great success for Khrushchev as President Eisenhower declined the ultimatum, it did result in their meeting at Camp David which ended in a promise to ensure better negotiation and agreement. This result was a success for Soviet foreign policy as it meant increased relations with the US and left Khrushchev ‘euphoric’[12] and preparations for a summit conference in Paris began.

  However, such friendly relations were not to last as in 1960 the Soviet military shot down a U-2 spy plane over the Urals as it was violating international law regarding over flights. Despite the fact that this was a diplomatic triumph for the USSR over the US, such a serious provocation for both sides threatened the summit. In due course the summit went ahead but with little trust in the ratio. Khrushchev stormed out when Eisenhower refused to apologise for the acts of espionage. ‘The fragile spirit of Camp David quickly dissipated’[13] and the small period of dйtente expired.

   Khrushchev’s last attempt at gaining superiority over the US without confrontation was his decision in 1962 to place missiles in Cuba, directed at the US. Khrushchev’s motive for this was yet again a defensive measure. The US had missiles in Turkey so it was reasoned that placing missiles just off the coast of Florida would restore nuclear parity. Also, this would give the USSR a socialist ally in the West, right on the doorstep of the biggest capitalist superpower in the world. However, Khrushchev failed to calculate the severity of the American reaction to this. In a move that Yanov claims ‘lacked subtlety and sophistication’[14], Khrushchev had managed to bring the world to ‘the brink of nuclear war’.[15] Not the sort of actions one would expect from a man who supposedly pursued the policy of peaceful coexistence.

   The US did not offer to resolve the issue diplomatically, the Soviet Union was ordered to remove the missiles or face a nuclear war. The US Strategic Air Command was put on the highest state of alert. Eventually, Khrushchev decided against risking nuclear war with the US, in the knowledge that this would result in the obliteration of the USSR. Khrushchev was forced to announce publicly the dismantling of the weapons and was required to step down.

   This sequence of events was catastrophic for Khrushchev’s career. In 1964 he was forced to retire, most probably due to the humiliation that he had caused the Soviet Union in the face of the West. In 1963 the Soviet Union signed a Limited Test Ban treaty with the US in an attempt to curb the likelihood of such a standoff occurring again; however, it was too late to deny that Khrushchev had demonstrated the military weakness of the Soviet Union to the world. He had posed ‘the most dangerous Soviet challenge to the US’[16] and had lost. The Soviet strategic position had worsened, Khrushchev had lost the chance to equalise the balance of power.

   In his battle to retain good relations with the US, Khrushchev had sacrificed the support of the second largest communist power, China. He saw China as potentially the most dangerous nation to the Soviet Union, alongside Germany, if they gained nuclear weapons. The major antagonism between the two was their diverged opinions regarding the US. Khrushchev desired to court the US, and use the benefits of their capitalist system to allow the Soviet Union to grow. The Chinese believed that a communist state should not woo a capitalist superpower such as the US and instead focus on extending the revolution.

   Disagreement had turned to hostility by 1960[17] and the two most powerful communist parties parted. Nevertheless, Khrushchev tried to maintain good relations with China which was difficult as Mao Zedong was appalled by his barefaced denunciation of Stalin. A major obstruction to resuming a state of peaceful coexistence between the two states was that Chinese communists did not believe that peaceful coexistence was a desirable path to socialism. They were more willing to accept war on that path to socialism, something that Khrushchev thoroughly disproved of. China believed that the US was a ‘paper dragon’[18] and held no respect for the Soviet’s timidity in the face of the US threat. Khrushchev criticized China for being dogmatic ‘left-adventurists’ who were set on a world war.[19]

1  2

BACK TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS