A two-level approach to U.S.-Soviet cooperation.

Abstract

This study evaluates how leaders introduce cooperative foreign policy initiatives into a long-standing international rivalry. I analyze the international cooperation as a two-level game, in which leaders act simultaneously in the international and domestic arenas. I test four hypotheses concerning the behavior of leaders who seek to introduce cooperative initiatives into long-standing dyadic rivalries. The study shows that leaders have various ways to address constituents' fears that their country will gain less in a relative sense from cooperation than the rival country will. The dissertation examines six cases of U.S.-Soviet attempts to cooperate in both security and trade relations. I select two cases from each of the Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev leadership periods. For the Khrushchev and Brezhnev cases in both issue-areas, the data show that the Soviet leader varied his rhetoric as a function of audience type to an extent that was highly significant in a statistical sense. In the Gorbachev trade case, the data produce weak statistical confirmation of the proposition that leaders strategically alter their rhetoric depending on the sort of audience that they are addressing. In the Gorbachev security case, the data show no significant variance of rhetoric as a function of audience type. Additionally, the study indicates that the Soviet leaders followed a variety of approaches in justifying their cooperative initiatives with the United States. Of the three leaders, Khrushchev used the bluntest rhetoric. Brezhnev preferred not to confront controversial issues in the explicit manner that his immediate predecessor had favored. Gorbachev sought to reform Soviet foreign relations by introducing the concept of new thinking, part of which involved erasing reciprocal U.S.-Soviet enemy images. Gorbachev apparently believed that he could not effectively attack these enemy images if he took a two-level approach to cooperation or tolerated his U.S. counterpart's taking such an approach. However, Gorbachev did not completely eschew the two-level game. In the issue-area of trade relations, he did vary his rhetoric to an appreciable degree as a function of audience.