The European Community
Concern with the implications of west European military integration has been one aspect of the broader Soviet concern with the process of West European integration generally. For many years the USSR regarded the EC as little more than an instrument to strengthen the European pillar of NATO. Soviet attitudes toward the EC, however, have undergone a significant evolution under Gorbachev. Since the mid-1980s, Soviet analysts have shown an increasing appreciation of the growing role of the EC as an economic and politic actor in international affairs. In particularly, analyst have pointed to a marked evolution toward formulating common EC positions on foreign policy.
The 1988Common Declaration was primarily motivated by economic concern, particularly the USSR’s desire for access to west European trade and technology. But it also reflected the Soviet leaderships’ growing appreciation of the important political role that the EC had begun to play in East-West relations. Soviet officials and analysts have increasingly pointed to the long-term political implications of accelerated integration, which is seen as laying the groundwork for closer cooperation in other areas, including foreign policy and the military.
From the Soviet Union’s perspective, the main danger is that West European integration will solidify the division of Europe into blocs, erecting new barriers to East-West trade, and deepening the economic and technological gap between the two parts of Europe. Gorbachev’s emphasis on the common Europe home has thus partly been aimed at preventing the creation of new impediments to Soviet access to West European research and development programs and ensuring that the USSR will benefit from new technology as West European integration intensifies.