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The decade ahead may see the U.S.S.R. increasingly preoccupied with suppressing unrest in the East bloc while coping with mounting Chinese obstreperousness. Together, these two preoccupations could generate a kind of self-containment. The diplomatic trick for the U.S. will be to keep the pressure on the U.S.S.R. from both directions without provoking the Soviets into attempting to eliminate the pressure points altogether.
In Eastern Europe, the U.S. and its allies should, quite literally, try to buy time for the various reformist forces there.
That means providing trade deals and even loans to the beleaguered governments—with as many strings as possible attached to prod state banks and planning agencies toward stricter accounting and sounder spending policies. Obviously, the Soviet Union will not allow its satellites to go into receivership with the West. But given its own shrinking ability to help Eastern Europe economically, the U.S.S.R. has no choice but to permit more Western involvement than it has in the past. Naturally, the West is under no obligation to bail the Soviets out of the mess they have made of the East bloc economies. But such assistance from the capitalist world might then encourage those satellite regimes to rely more and more on Western economic help as time passes. As they do, they may be more tempted to try some Western remedies, such as free-market incentives and decentralized management, as cures for their own internal economic problems.
Even if the independent unions survive in Poland, they are likely to be quarantined there. If, however, labor unrest does arise elsewhere in the East bloc, the U.S. Government and responsible private organizations like the AFL-CIO should resist the temptation to cheer on the strikers too loudly. That would not only fan Soviet paranoia but would also help the Soviets justify an intervention by claiming it was against "Western intrigues and subversion."
The amount of time that the U.S. can help buy for peaceful reform hi the East bloc is probably limited. The economic ills of the satellites are not just chronic, they are degenerative and could be terminal. East bloc governments, by and large, are unpopular. Brezhnev's successors face two bleak choices: they can accept the eventual breakup of the Soviet empire, which for them would be unacceptable, or they can keep trying to patch the cracks in the monolith by reconquering their colonies when recalcitrance gets too far out of hand. The Soviets need loyal, subservient satellites, not just as a geographical buffer to protect their security but as a basis for their claim to being the standard-bearers of an internationalist ideology. That claim is critical to the propaganda and policies they are carrying out elsewhere in the world.
Whatever form the crisis in Eastern Europe takes, the U.S.S.R. is clearly in for protracted, expensive and embarrassing difficulties that could distract it from making trouble elsewhere. The consequences for the West could be favorable: the peoples of East bloc countries, despite more than a generation of Communist rule, look to the West with aspiration, envy and a sense of kinship. The U.S. does not need actively to incite and aggravate troubles that the U.S.S.R. is in for anyway. But it can, by moving with care and