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With hindsight, some British experts suspect that Gorbachev was led into fundamental errors by his own dynamism, self-confidence and impatience. Says a senior British official: "He moved on all fronts simultaneously, which has confronted him with all the country's problems at once." Many Soviet scholars regard the party bureaucracy as the main obstacle to reform and argue that Gorbachev, despite top-level housecleaning, has so far failed to sweep out conservatives and dead wood at the middle and local levels, where things get done -- or don't. Others say glasnost unleashed pent-up ethnic resentment. By attacking across the board, Gorbachev only produced confusion, resistance and rampant nationalism. Says a Foreign Office expert in London: "You don't have to be a Soviet conservative to think he should have exercised more control."
Ironically, that is exactly what he did in applying perestroika to foreign affairs. Gorbachev knew where he wanted to go and how to get there. He moved first to improve U.S.-Soviet relations, which he considered pivotal. To prove his bona fides, he withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan and supported regional settlements in Africa and Latin America. He followed up by renouncing intervention in the affairs of Eastern Europe. His steady march toward nuclear-arms reduction often caught the U.S. off guard and vastly impressed Western Europe. His sure hand on foreign policy has been so convincing that some American congressional leaders are complaining that the Bush Administration is responding too tentatively.
But Gorbachev could still overestimate the practical value of a warmer relationship with the U.S. Like so many foreign leaders with domestic problems, Gorbachev might be looking to Washington to bail him out of his crisis with pledges of cooperation and signs of acceptance. That would be a mistake. Not even a series of major triumphs abroad could compensate for the lack of a blueprint to make perestroika work at home.