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Andropov proposed a new reform program designed to give local managers in a limited number of target factories greater freedom to allocate funds and set production goals. But the experiments were too small in scope to loosen the tentacular grip of Moscow's central planners. Under Andropov, the Soviet leadership continued Brezhnev's ineffectual policy of throwing money at agriculture. Despite the introduction of a program that gave small teams of farmers greater incentives to be productive, agriculture remained the Achilles' heel of the Soviet economy.
Andropov also failed to achieve his top foreign policy goal: preventing the deployment of new U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe. Pursuing what at first seemed to be a shrewd propaganda offensive, the Soviet leader tried to exploit the burgeoning West European peace movement. In a flagrant attempt to influence the outcome of West Germany's national elections in March 1983, he dispatched Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to Bonn to encourage West Germans, in effect, to cast their ballots for the Social Democratic Party, which was far more skeptical of the NATO missile plan than was the Christian Democratic government of Chancellor Kohl. But the effort backfired, and Kohl and his coalition won with a large majority. His government stood by its commitment to accept the new nuclear weapons if there was no breakthrough in U.S.-Soviet negotiations in Geneva on limiting intermediate-range nuclear forces. With no progress in sight, the first missiles were deployed in Britain and West Germany. The Soviets walked out of the Geneva talks on intermediate-range missiles and indefinitely postponed the resumption of strategic-arms negotiations and talks aimed at reducing conventional forces in Europe.
Andropov had no more success in other areas. He singled out former Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua and Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq for special attention following Brezhnev's funeral, prompting speculation that he would move to improve relations with Peking and try to bring the war in Afghanistan to an end. But Sino-Soviet negotiators ended their third round of talks last October without any major breakthrough. Despite hints that Andropov was looking for a way to withdraw his country's 105,000 troops from Afghanistan, the war continues with nothing but Soviet military might to hold the Marxist regime in Kabul in power.
The Middle East was perhaps the only region of the world in which the potential for Soviet troublemaking increased during Andropov's short tenure, complicating U.S. efforts to bring peace to war-torn Lebanon. Syria had suffered the humiliating loss of 96 aircraft and more than 390 tanks during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In response, the Soviets sent an estimated $2 billion worth of weapons and more than 5,000 advisers and technicians to Syria. The arsenal included SA-5 long-range (150-to 180-mile) antiaircraft missiles capable of striking aircraft over much of Israel.