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XVIII. Meeting of the PCC, Prague, 4-5 January 1983
Editorial Note 

During the 32 months that elapsed since the previous PCC meeting, the accession of Ronald Reagan, the Polish crisis, and the death of Brezhnev had been among the landmarks of the evolving "second Cold War." The immediate issue before the PCC was NATO's progressing preparations for the deployment of the "Euromissiles" in the absence of an agreement with the Soviet Union on the dismantling of the already deployed Soviet intermediate-range missiles targeted over the whole of Western Europe.

The prevailing feeling among the participants was that the threat of war had recently increased. Brezhnev's successor Yurii Andropov attempted to explain in his keynote speech why and how the situation had so unexpectedly deteriorated.

Andropov did not offer the standard Soviet explanation. He did not attribute what he regarded as a "sudden change" in US and NATO policy solely to the West's attempts to reverse its losses - Soviet attainment of strategic parity, setbacks in the Third World, internal crisis of the capitalist system. Instead, Andropov argued that the West was also taking advantage of the opportunities offered to it by the increasingly evident weaknesses of the communist countries, particularly their indebtedness, food shortages, and technological backwardness, besides the recent crisis in Poland. He saw the adversary as bent on destroying the established military balance and creating a dangerous situation in which, due to the particular characteristics of the new weapons systems, it might be difficult to differentiate between Western blackmail and readiness to take the "fatal steps." Despite his description of Reagan as a political "thug," Andropov nevertheless stressed Soviet willingness to negotiate. In a reversal of traditional Western estimates of Soviet capabilities, Andropov concluded on a sober note by suggesting that the United States, unlike the Soviet Union, could afford to continue the arms race indefinitely because of the kind of socio-political system America had.

Supreme commander Marshal Viktor Kulikov maintained in his presentation that NATO was now striving for conventional military superiority and that it was capable of attacking in Central Europe without much preparation under the guise of maneuvers.

In view of the increased threat of war, Romania urged unilateral reductions of both military expenditures and the armed forces, demanding for the Warsaw Pact allies a say in the Soviet-American arms control negotiations. Romania urged that the PCC's draft declaration be revised to tone down formulations provocative to the West, many of which had been inserted there at the urgings of Poland's military regime of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski. The Romanian amendments were eventually accepted by Andropov, who judged them insignificant.

Vojtech Mastny

 

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