This article examines the INF treaty negotiations and seeks to capture the dynamics of domestic and international factors that affected the reorientation of Soviet foreign policy. This article contends that radical changes in the international environment prompted by the first Reagan administration played a substantial role in provoking domestic debate within the Soviet Union over the direction of its foreign policy. This article focuses on the changes in Soviet perceptions at two turning points in the negotiation process: the interruption of the negotiations in late 1983 and the decision to de-link the INF negotiations from the Strategic Defense issue after the Reykjavik Summit.
In the first section, the author argues that while fear of a nuclear first strike by the U.S. loomed large among the Soviet ruling elites, the political cohesion among the Western allied countries regarding the deployment of US missiles, along with the discontinuation of the negotiations, created a sense of failure and weakness within the Soviet leadership. This contributed to a change in climate within the Soviet leadership and helped to convert a general sense of anxiety into a concrete desire among some members of the CPSU hierarchy, particularly in the International Department of the Central Committee, to move away from the Soviet Union's confrontational and unyielding posture.
The second section focuses on the motivating factors behind the Soviet Union's sudden and radical reorientation in its INF negotiation policy in early 1987. Although the Soviet domestic debate over the issue experienced some fluctuation, members of the old ruling elite, such as Gromyko, stated that the SS-20 deployment had been a ‘terrible failure’ for past Soviet foreign policy at a Politburo meeting before the Reykjavik Summit. The delinking of the INF negotiations from other negotiating issues was proposed by Gromyko himself, while Gorbachev was rather cautious, at least until late 1986. Gorbachev's final decision to de-link the INF negotiations reflected an altered strategic purpose for concluding the treaty—namely, to signal to the world the Soviet Union's sincerity in ending the Cold War. From this point onward, the change in INF negotiation policy extended beyond simple reactions to past foreign policy failures, enabling the immediate conclusion of the treaty.
In fact, the direct causal strength of the international (Reagan-induced) factors is limited in that these factors did not determine the eventual outcome. However, any evaluation of the origins and meanings of Gorbachev's bold attempt to end the Cold War should not ignore the role of the prior recognition of the Soviet Union's weakness and quest for foreign policy change by its ruling elite.

抄録全体を表示

It has long been a topic of debate on the pros and cons of growth and competitiveness through unrelated diversification of large business enterprises. This article explores the impact of corporate diversification on business competitiveness of Westinghouse Electric Corporation in the U.S. steam turbine market, over close to two decades of the postwar period.

Westinghouse has been deemed to be a prime example of the decline of U.S. industrial enterprises through overdiversification during the 1960s, but there were important other factors, as well as the earlier “timing” of declining its core business competitiveness than commonly indicated, to understand the relation between the pursuit of diversification and declining competitiveness.

Two factors, namely entry of munitions business in the 50s and insufficient R&D investment in incremental innovation during the early 60s, are important for explaining the decline in competitiveness in the Westinghouse core business, suggesting judicious examination about the impact of the military-industrial complex on the declining of industrial enterprises that can be investigated to further understand the history of big business.

The findings also highlight the importance of looking at strategic plot (e.g. “building the total electric city”), as well as managerial belief for corporate growth, with top management perceiving ‘unrelated’ business as ‘related’ by expanding the traditional strategic belief of “the benign circle of electric power,” in studies of diversification with business competitiveness on Westinghouse. Also considered is an examination of competition-based forces that led to unreasonable diversification and the decisive impact brought on by a gap in scale of required resources. The article may extend our understanding of how top management integrates changes in the external environment and internal resources into corporate strategy in modern business enterprises.

抄録全体を表示