Imagine, just as a mind game, a world without the cold war. What a strange and different place it would be! The bipolar world would grow other centers of power, ones based more on economic than on military might. Although the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. would no doubt remain competitors, their rivalry would begin to resemble the ones that have always existed between powerful nations rather than a Manichaean struggle between two profoundly incompatible views about individuals and society. This could ease the nuclear threat that has long defined the cold war. Instead, that threat could serve to define the common stake each side has in assuring the world's survival.
Such a withering away of the cold war would require a large measure of freedom within the Soviet Union to help dispel Western outrage over the way it treats the people it rules. The Kremlin would have to justify its authority by focusing on the needs and aspirations of its citizens rather than by pursuing expansionist aims. In addition, the Soviets would need to abandon the notion that their security depends on threatening the security of others. Lenin's old dictum of kto-kogo (who-whom) -- or who will prevail over whom -- would have to give way to a concept of live and let live.
Strange and different? Yes, very. But not quite as strange and different as it would have seemed a couple of years ago. Novoye myshleniye (new thinking), Mikhail Gorbachev calls this vision of a new international order. The phrase has become a standard entry in Gorbachev's lexicon, along with another mouthful: obshchaya bezopasnost (mutual security). In the world according to Gorbachev, these concepts mean rejecting the basic zero-sum, cold-war notion that any gain for one side requires a loss for the other, that security depends on making rivals insecure. "Less security for the U.S. compared to the Soviet Union would not be in our interest," he says, "since it could lead to mistrust and produce instability."
This new outlook, Gorbachev argues, is required in an atomic age. "Nuclear deterrence demands the development of new approaches, methods and forms of relations between different social systems, states and regions," he told the Communist Party Congress last year. "It is vital that all should feel equally secure." Says Professor Robert Legvold, director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University: "This is a historic juncture. Gorbachev is the first Soviet leader to link national security to mutual security, to argue that the U.S.S.R. cannot achieve security at the expense of its main rival."
Accepting this rhetoric on faith would be dangerous, but so would dismissing it outright. If only in public relations terms, it makes no sense for the U.S. and its allies to surrender the high ground. To counter the Gorbachev line, the West will need to come up with initiatives and a new terminology of its own. Above all, it must find ways to induce Gorbachev to show his hand, to reveal what changes in Soviet policy he is willing, and able, to make. So far there have been few concrete changes, and some of them -- involving a more sophisticated outreach to other countries -- actually present a new challenge to the U.S. The new era that Gorbachev busily projects would require not merely a new line and a few changes at the top, but a total transformation of the Soviet system, both at home and abroad.