TOKYO. For six years the most important factor in Soviet foreign policy has been Soviet domestic politics. The internal crisis in the U.S.S.R. gave Mikhail Gorbachev both an incentive and a pretext for transforming his country's external behavior.
Gorbachev showed a genius for making a virtue out of necessity. The more the Soviet Union turned inward, the more the world cheered its President for abandoning many of the bad habits, disreputable clients and ill-gotten gains of the past. By taking the first steps toward reductions in doomsday arsenals, liberating Eastern Europe, cooperating in the resolution of regional conflicts and enabling the...
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