Shevardnadze’s and Gorbachev’s true weakness on the international stage was not their presumed malleability or naiveté vis-à-vis their U.S. and West European counterparts. A foreign policy strategist or a top diplomat can usually be as successful as the strength of the country he leads and serves would allow. If incompetent, he can punch under one’s weight, or make costly, even disastrous mistakes, sapping his own power. One can also seek to punch above one’s weight, of course, but only in extraordinary circumstances and for brief periods of time. The Soviet Union, which Gorbachev led, and Shevardnadze represented to the world, had been rotten economically, politically and ideologically long before they ascended to their posts. Again, there is no need to forget that Gorbachev’s détente and disarmament were dictated primarily by the growing lack of resources even for modest domestic development.

This does not mean that Foreign Minister Shevardnadze made no mistakes. Like Gorbachev, he was overly enthusiastic about their “new thinking,” and overly optimistic about the future of relations with the West. The end of the Cold War must have seemed to him the end of history, which of course it was not. The binary construct of the era of confrontation—friend or foe—demanded turning foes into friends, a conversion which proved far from fully satisfactory. “Universal interests of humankind” were not given a proper place among the various echelons of Moscow’s foreign policy, but instead appeared to overshadow the country’s specific national interests. Against that background, the charges that are usually brought against Shevardnadze by his critics, from banning the Oka missile to the Bering Sea settlement, should be seriously discussed by foreign policy historians. Luckily, they have so much more access to the papers of the Gorbachev presidency than of the periods that have followed.