explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor on 26 April 1986.
Together with Gorbachev’s other main domestic policy positions –
perestroika(‘reconstruction’) and demokratizatsiia(‘democratisa-
tion’) – this undermined the coherence of the system of mono-
organisational socialism, and liberated forces which ultimately
consumed the system (Karklins, 1994). For a reformer interested in
bringing about major domestic change, an unpopular foreign com-
mitment was an unnecessary burden. But from a classical Soviet
perspective, Afghanistan could not be seen simply in these terms.
An abandonment of the Afghanistan commitment could have
undermined the notion that the gains of socialism were irreversible,
and set a dangerous precedent for Eastern Europe. This problem
was overcome through the articulation of a complementary theory
of international relations which set the scene not only for the with-
drawal of troops from Afghanistan, but for improved East–West
relations and ultimately the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc.
The name given to this theory was novoe myshlenie, or ‘New
Thinking’. The term was not itself coined by Gorbachev: indeed, it
had been used in a book published during Chernenko’s tenure, and
co-authored by the son of Foreign Minister Gromyko (Gromyko
and Lomeiko, 1984). However, under the influence of Gorbachev,
Shevardnadze, and Gorbachev’s adviser Aleksandr Iakovlev, who
had spent a decade from 1973 as Soviet Ambassador to Canada, it
was given a distinctive twist, and in contrast to domestic policy,
where innovations frequently require the cooperation of many dif-
ferent groups capable of dragging their feet, change in foreign pol-
icy was much more directly in the hands of the top leadership.
Novoe myshleniecame to stand for a cluster of propositions (see
Light, 1987: 294–315; Kubálková and Cruickshank, 1989: 6).
These included the importance of interdependence and mutual
security in the nuclear age and in the face of common problems
such as ecological damage; the significance of peace as the highest
human value, and the notion that security was indivisible; and the
importance of comprehensive security based on a balance of inter-
ests rather than balance of power. Its key dimension, as Archie
Brown put it, was a ‘humanistic universalism’ (Brown, 1996: 221).
116 The Afghanistan Wars