Speculative answers to some questions

---Why did Gorbachev make such radical moves in foreign policy?
---Was it a matter of political, strategic or economic requirement?
Olaf: Gorbachev was looking for a gap between the US, and the European NATO states. He was hoping that it could be possible to exploit different interests. The US was no longer the sole power house of Western economy; Japan, UK, Germany, even France and Italy had developed economic strength.
Wide spread political European movements, like the Peace movement, and a growing Anti USism gave hope to communist that it could be possible to build the European House, as Gorbachev called it. This would be a House excluding the US as major player, an alternative to NATO.
Zwick (Political Science and Politics, Vol. 22, No. 2) writes that a multipolar approach “allows Gorbachev to play Western trading partners against each other while improving Soviet technological capacity.”
Offering disarmament to the Europeans was actually what they were hoping for, in a period when US aggressive policy (the second CW) divided the alliance. Example: the unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing.
This in combination could have been a solution for a lot of problems, firstly, however, to gain time to revitalise the USSR system.
---Was it an expression of his personal beliefs, and if so how did he rise to the height of power in the communist party of the Soviet Union?
I would agree with Janice Gross Stein, who writes (in International Organisation, Vol. 48. No. 2) “The evidence does not suggest that Gorbachev was chosen because of his commitment to change Soviet foreign policy. Rather, he was acknowledged as one of the leading proponents of domestic reform.”
Now here Gorbachev’s ability to learn comes to play. He adopted as personal believe what he thought to be right. This allowed him to follow his ideas consequently, once he was in power.