Book Reviews : Soviet Foreign Policy 1962-73: The Paradox of Super-Power by Robin Edmonds. O.U.P. 1975. £4.50
| Author | W. Horsfall Carter |
| DOI | 10.1177/004711787600500308 |
| Date | 01 April 1976 |
| Published date | 01 April 1976 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
1046
column
and
television
schedules)
by
his
friend
and
former
journalist
colleague,
John
Scali,
the
then
Permanent
Representative
to
the
UN.
He
was
assigned
to
the
Third
Committee,
Human
Rights,
a
subject
on
which
he
certainly
had
strong
views,
and
these
were
not
likely
to
be
in
line
with
those
of
his
predecessors,
Eleanor
Roosevelt
and
the
then
avowedly
liberal
Daniel
Patrick
Moynihan.
In
his
20
years
in
New
York,
the
author
tells
us
he
had
never
once
set
foot
in
the
UN
premises.
But,
politically,
he
had
the
advantage
of
having
a
brother
in
the
Senate,
capable
of
withstanding
the
growls
and
grumbles
of
Senator
Fulbright.
His
nomination
coincided,
as
it
happened,
with
the
advent
of
Henry
Kissinger,
newly-appointed
Secretary
of
State;
and
the
object
of
the
exercise
was
manifestly
to
re-define
America’s
relationship
with
the
UN
in
the
light
of
mounting
Afro-Asian
domination
of
the
Assembly.
This
is
the
spicy,
but
not
unserious,
story
of
the
proceedings.
The
arch-conservative
had
to
come
to
terms
somehow
with
an
areopagus
in
which
everything
that
was
wrong
in
the
world
was
attributed
to
(1)
colonialism;
(2)
imperialism;
(3)
racialism;
and
(4)
economic
inequality
(in
that
order).
There
was
the
added
excitement
of
the
flare-up
of hos-
tilities
in
the
Middle
East.
What
President
Nixon
and
the
State
Depart-
ment
were
concerned
about,
particularly,
was
to
maintain,
as
far
as
was
humanly
possible,
harmony
with
the
other
super-Power,
the
Soviet
Union.
When
one
considers
that
the
established
convention
at
the
UN
was
&dquo;simply
to
ignore
Soviet
infractions
against
the
stated
ideals
of
the
Organization&dquo;,
one
can
apprecia~te
the
extent
of
the
author’s
sense
of
frustration.
(His
suggestion,
for
example,
that
Solzhenitsyn
be
invited
to
the
forum
was
dropped
like
a
hot
brick!)
He
was
gently
but
firmly
eased
out
whenever
he
wanted
to
express
ideas
of
his
own
clashing
with
the
detailed
instruction
from
the
State
Department.
However,
as
an
alternative
to
resigning,
he
decided
to
write
this
Journal:
and
so
we
are
treated
to
a
lot
of
fun
at
the
expense
of
African
stalwarts
like
General
Mobutu
of
Zaire,
General
Amin
(who
did
not,
after
all,
appear
in
person
but
said
his
say
in
Kampala),
Jamil
Baroodi,
the
sempiternal
representative
of
Saudi
Arabia,
the
Soviet
and
Cuban
delegates,
etc.
The
wry
conclusions
at
which
William
F.
Buckley
Jr.
arrived-
not
unexpectedly-were
(1)
that
the
UN
Assembly
was
&dquo;more
and
more
pulling
away
from
US
policy - Appendix
B
spells
it
out
in
detail
in
a
breakdown
of
a
cross-sample
of
the
Resolutions
sponsored;
and
(2)
that
&dquo;the
United
Nations
is
the
most
concentrated
assault
on
moral
reality
in
the
history
of
free
institutions,
and
it
does
not
do
to
ignore
that
fact,
or
worse,
to
get
used
to
it&dquo;.
Hence
the
recent
philippics
of
Daniel
Moynihan
Mark
II.
Withal,
the
author has
a
crumb
of
comfort
for
us
in
his
affirmation
that
&dquo;in
clerical
detail
the
UN
is
quite
extra-
ordinarily
efficient&dquo;.
W.
Horsfall
Carter
Soviet
Foreign
Policy
1962-73:
The
Paradox
of
Super-Power
by
Robin
Edmonds.
O.U.P.
1975.
£4.50.
Mr.
Robin
Edmunds
has
taken
over
from
George
Kennan
the
task
of
elucidating
the
enigma
of
Russian
foreign
policy.
With
two
years
as
Minister
at
the
Embassy
in
Moscow
behind
him
(1969-71)
he
has
availed
himself
of
a
sabbatical
period
spent
as
a
Research
Fellow
at
Glasgow
University
to
make
this
masterly
reappraisal.
He
has
adopted
the best
possible
angle
of
approach-&dquo;to
observe
developments
dispassionately
but
as
though
from
the
Kremlin&dquo;.
The
structure
of
the
book,
which
takes
off
from
the
Caribbean
crisis
of
October
1962
(what
we
call
the
Cuban
missiles
affair),
is
well-
conceived.
We
have,
first,
a
cogent
analysis
of
the
Years
of
Adventure,
when
the
USSR
was
ruled
by
the
exuberant
and
volatile
Khrushchev.
There
followed
the
Years
of
Consolidation
under
the
sign
of
the
Col-
lective
Leadership.
Part
III
discusses
the
Years
of
Negotiation,
identi-
fiable
with
Brezhnev’s
rise
to
the
top.
And
the
final
section
is
an
assess-
ment
of
the
Motivating
Forces,
completed
by
some
speculation
on
the
prospects
for
the
next
ten
years
-
including
a
postscript
which
embraces
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