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I remember from my trip to Poland in 1959 illustrates this. Even now I can see the members of a crack Polish honor guard standing on a flatbed truck, cheering, and raising their hands in the “V-for-victory” sign as our motorcade left the Warsaw airport. The Kremlin’s military planners are daydreaming if they are counting on the loyalty of Polish troops in the event of a war in Europe.
    Never in history has an aggressive power been more successful in extending its domination over other nations and less successful in winning the approval of the people of those nations. As has been the case since the end of World War II, millions of refugees are on the move today. The traffic is all one way—from communism to freedom.
    The costs of Soviet conquests are a massive drain on its desperately weak economy. The British may have been enriched by their empire, but the Soviets are being impoverished by theirs. Andropov must pour huge economic resources into his empire to keep his shaky political investments afloat. Cuba costs him $14 million a day. Angola, Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Nicaragua cost him over $5 million a day. Afghanistan has cost him millions of dollars and thousands of casualties. The resistance Soviet puppet regimes are meeting in Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua proves that the Soviet Union is increasingly unable to digest what it swallows.
    On its Western front, the Soviet Union faces a newly united NATO. America’s allies, without whom a comprehensive peace would be impossible, are acting with vision and strength under the leadership of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl and anti-Soviet socialists like François Mitterrand and Bettino Craxi. The alliance is united behind a program to redress the European balance of power by deploying American Pershing II and cruise missiles. The Soviet propaganda campaign has failed. Andropov must now know that these deployments will begin by the end of the year unless he concludes an arms control agreement in Geneva.
    On its Eastern front, the Soviet Union faces its greatest long-term challenge: Under the leadership of Yasuhiro Nakasone, Japan, an economic giant but a military pygmy, is beginning to address the question of improving its national defenses. China, still a potential enemy, is not a military threat to the Soviet Union today. But it looms as an awesome danger for the future because of its one billion people and enormous resources. As historical determinists, the Soviets look at eventswith the long term in mind. For them, threats in the future are problems in the present.
    Andropov can boast of great gains for the Soviet Union in the Third World, but his position with the world’s major powers must give him pause. Mao Zedong’s military manual called for isolating the cities by capturing the countryside. Andropov’s policy is right out of Mao’s book. He seeks to strangle the industrial West by cutting off its supply of key resources from the Third World. This strategy might work in the long run, but its most profound immediate effect is to isolate the Soviet Union. Andropov has no allies among the major nations of the world. He faces potential adversaries in Western Europe, Japan, China, Canada, and the United States. Together these countries represent over 60 percent of the world’s economy and present the Soviet Union with the grim prospect of having to face powerful enemies on two fronts.
    When Andropov totals up the balance sheet of Soviet strengths and weaknesses, he cannot be encouraged. The debits are the tremendous problems he confronts both inside and outside his country. The assets are his military power. Great as they are, his assets are ill-suited to solving his problems.
    Andropov is motivated by personal factors as well. He is a man in a hurry. He is ten years older than Brezhnev was when he came to power, eight years older than Khrushchev, 23 years older than Stalin. No one