THE UNEVEN RECORD OF SOVIET DIPLOMACY

IN the past two decades, Soviet foreign policy has proved consistently costly, dangerous and in large measure ineffectual. After World War II, the Soviet Union scored tremendous gains, principally the Communization of Eastern Europe accomplished by the Red army. In due course, the West was compelled to acknowledge these gains and stop thinking about "rolling back" Communism. On the other hand, Moscow's grip on its satellites grew dramatically weaker. And beyond its original World War II conquests, Moscow won virtually nothing in the way of further Communist takeovers, with the sole exception of Cuba. Quite apart from Communism, Russia has achieved far less than it has often been credited with in the more conventional, big-power style of spreading influence, particularly in the "third world," where its potential had once seemed so menacing.

In almost every direct postwar confrontation with the West, Moscow backed off or down. Major milestones:

P:IRAN. When Stalin refused to withdraw Soviet troops from the country's northern tier after World War II, U.S. and British pressure, backed by the West's monopoly on nuclear arms, forced their unconditional evacuation in 1946.

P:GREECE & TURKEY. Both nations faced takeover in 1947--Greece from a savage struggle with Communist guerrillas, Turkey from Russian pressure to annex its northeastern territories and thereby force joint sovereignty over the strategic Bosporus and Dardanelles. The Truman Doctrine was chiefly responsible for thwarting Moscow's goals in both countries.

P:BERLIN. Moscow did its best to squeeze the Allies (U.S., Britain, France) out of West Berlin with the blockade in 1948-49. Truman's characteristically spunky reply was the airlift, and another Soviet defeat. Again in 1959, after Nikita Khrushchev launched his rocket-rattling "breakthrough" policy, the Russians began threatening to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany, thereby isolating and possibly dooming West Berlin. The threat to Berlin, repeated in 1960 and 1962, was defused by U.S. troop reinforcements. The building of the Wall in 1961 to choke off the flow of escapees was tacit admission of failure.

P:KOREA. Stalin thought that the southern half of the divided country--a scant 120 miles from Japan--was ripe for plucking in 1950. Truman's decision to intervene, with United Nations support, frustrated that attempt. While Korea was no victory for the U.S., the stalemate that resulted prevented the Russians from achieving their original objective.

P:CUBA. In the cold war's tautest showdown, John F. Kennedy forced Khrushchev's hand by demanding the removal of Soviet missiles from the Caribbean. Faced with the alternative of nuclear war, Khrushchev caved in.

P:VIET NAM. Though the U.S. is deeply and painfully embroiled in Viet Nam, the Southeast Asian war has yielded scant prospect of benefit for Moscow either. Kosygin and Communist Boss Leonid Brezhnev, reversing Khrushchev's policy of noninvolvement in Southeast Asia, began aiding Hanoi early in 1965, when a Viet Cong victory seemed imminent. Large-scale U.S. intervention thwarted their hopes of a quick, cheap victory and exposed Russia to the charge that it will retreat from its involvement in any war of national liberation if the stakes get too high.

Russia can take some comfort from the divisions inside the Western Alliance and some victories in minor skirmishes, such as the U.S. backdown on the U.N. payments issue. But perhaps the prime Soviet accomplishment in recent years is that, compared to the buccaneering days of Stalin, Russia has become respectable as a world power. At home it has shown a measure of liberalization, and a pragmatic concern with prosperity that tends to discourage foreign adventure. Abroad, it has shown discretion in staving off any major, nuclear East-West conflict. The 1966 Tashkent Declaration, in which Russia acted as mediator between warring India and Pakistan, symbolized this new Soviet international respectability. But Moscow has had great difficulty in translating this image into concrete influence, partly because it seems basically divided as to its ultimate aims. Is it to be a conventional big power with global responsibilities and trade interests, more or less unhampered by the old Marxist goal of world revolution? Or is it to compete with Peking in the expensive and increasingly futile business of spreading disorder and rebellion?

Russian leaders are torn between the two policies. As a result, Russia has made scant headway along either course. Certainly, the Soviets' client states have grown increasingly skeptical of Moscow's interest in their cherished "wars of liberation." By contrast, the overwhelming U.S. commitment to South Viet Nam has persuaded many nations in Asia and elsewhere that Washington is willing to support its commitments to the end.

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