Interview with Marshall Shulman, 1986

Marshall Shulman was the founding director of the W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advance Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia University, and served as special adviser on Soviet Affairs to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance during the Carter Administration. He begins by discussing the ill-fated Vance mission to Moscow in early 1977, then moves to an assessment of different levels of concern in the United States about Soviet missile developments, and of what the Soviets were actually up to. He follows with a broad discussion about security concerns in the late 1970s, which leads to a discussion of how the MX came about. The interview turns to Soviet activities in the Horn of Africa and to the question of whether Moscow actually had a grand strategy (which he doubts). He walks through how different views on the subject translated into different proposed counter-strategies, and how these various notions were expressed by Zbigniew Brzezinski and the National Security Council staff, versus the State Department. He discusses the latter's attitudes toward linkage, then goes on to explain specific policy issues such as the Cuba brigade and playing the China card. He makes the argument that fears about major Soviet geopolitical gains at the time were, in retrospect, greatly exaggerated.