SOVIETS MAY BE CURTAILING THIRD WORLD ADVENTURES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706780007-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 19, 2011
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: July 29, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706780007-0
LOS ANGELES TIMES - Tuesday, 29 July 1986 - p. 8 Part I
U.S. Officials Remain Skeptical
Soviets May Be Curtailing
Third World Adventures
WASHINGTON-The Soviet
Union, which has not launched any
new adventures in the Third World
since its invasion of Afghanistan in
1979, may be abandoning its long-
standing policy of abetting "na-
tional liberation movements"
around the globe, according to
academic experts on the Soviet
Union.
Many of these experts contend
that economic troubles at home, a
desire for improved relations with
the United States and the instabili-
ty of some of the client states in the
Third World, such as South Yemen
and Ethiopia, have curbed the
Kremlin's appetite for new adven-
tures abroad.
Whatever the reason, Mikhail S.
Gorbachev, who became the top
Soviet leader last year, has toned
mes Staff Writer
down the inflammatory rhetoric of
his predecessors and openly hinted
at the wish to disengage.
He has referred to the Soviet
presence in Afghanistan as a
"bleeding wound," for example,
suggesting that he wants to resolve
this regional conflict. And his an-
nouncement Monday that Moscow
will withdraw six regiments of its
115,000 men from Afghanistan as a
gesture "to speed up political set-
tlement" is regarded by some as an
important diplomatic move, though
it is easily reversible, that will not
handicap the Soviets' conduct of
their anti-guerrilla war and will
not necessarily lead to Soviet dis-
engagement.
But U.S. officials remain skepti-
cal. State Department spokesman
Please see SOV ETS, Page 8
STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706780007-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12119: CIA-RDP9O-00965RO00706780007-0
_Part I/Tuesday, July 29, 1986
11013 AAgetetr tnmep
SOVIETS: Kremlin May Be Losing Appetite for 3rd World Adventures
C4ntlnued from Page 1
Bernard Kalb pointed out that
" iriilar withdrawals announced in
the past were part of regular troop
rotation without any reductions in
the total numbers of Soviet troops
iii. Afghanistan."
And hard evidence that the So-
viets generally have embarked on a
more moderate foreign policy re-
mains sketchy.
"Actual Soviet behavior," said
Francis Fukuyama, a Rand Corp.
analyst specializing in Soviet-
third World issues, "continues to
be extremely competitive.
"It won't be retrenchment like
the United States after Vietnam,"
Fukuyama predicted. "Moscow will -
concentrate (its aid) on existing
clients, where there would be ma-
jor negative:- consequences if it
withdrew, but will not look for new
opportunities in the Third World."
A State Department official
agreed. "The Soviets would proba-
bly like to withdraw a little to catch
their breath," he said, "but we've
seen that they are also not going to
allow themselves to be pushed out
of important client states. We may
push, but they'll push back."
'Regimes Challenged'
The Reagan Administration is
pushing. In a little-noticed mes-
sage to Congress this spring, Rea-
gan said that the Kremlin had
"overreached" in the 1970s and
now requires "international calm to
deal with its internal problems."
Meanwhile, he said, anti-Soviet
insurgencies in the Third World
provide new opportunities for
"democratic revolution."
"Growing resistance movements
now challenge Communist regimes
installed or maintained by the
military power of the Soviet Union
and its colonial agents-in Afghan-
istan, Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia
and Nicaragua," he declared. "We
did not create this historical phe-
Associated Press
Mikhail Gorbachev has called
the Soviet presence in Afghan-
istan a "bleeding wound."
nomenon, but we must not fail to
respond to it."
The United States is now provid-
ing major aid to anti-Soviet insur-
gencies in Angola, Afghanistan and
Nicaragua and may be actively
involved elsewhere as well.
"In certain key respects," Fuku-
yama has written, "the United
States and the Soviet Union are in
the process of reversing roles in the
Third World. What is new is the
number and seriousness of the
opportunities for American-spon-
sored threats to the status quo."
In Gorbachev's address to the
Communist Party Congress in Feb-
ruary, strikingly absent were the
standard Soviet pledges to support
national liberation struggles" in
the Third World. Instead, the new
Soviet leader called for bold new
thinking and remarked that it was
no longer tolerable for the Soviet
foreign minister to be known to the
world as "Mr. Nyet."
And in June, when Gorbachev
wrote to President Reagan about
issues the two nations should ad-
dress, he mentioned "the regional
conflicts going on in the world,"
Reagan said. Until now, the issue of
regional conflicts has been put on
U.S.-Soviet summit agendas only
at American insistence.
Two noted U.S. Kremlinologists,
Seweryn Bialer and Joan M. Afferi-
ca of Columbia University, wrote
recently that Gorbachev appears
.,more realistic" than the late lead-
er Leonid I. Brezhnev about the use
of military power.
In an article in "Foreign Affairs,"
Bialer and Afferica predicted that
Gorbachev will continue the Sovi-
ets' military intervention in Af-
ghanistan, Ethiopia and Angola
because Soviet credibility is on the
line there. But he is also not likely
to risk new foreign adventures,
they said, because the Soviet Union
is already overextended and, in
view of the Reagan Administra-
tion's greater assertiveness in the
world, the risks of new military
adventures far exceed those of the
1970s.
'Conflicts In Asia'
Many Soviet experts in Europe
agree with this view. Prof. Boris
Meissner of West Germany's Co-
logne University wrote recently
that Gorbachev's "wish to defuse
the existing conflicts in Asia,"
including ending the Afghanistan
incursion, represents "another in-
dication of more restraint in the
Soviet Union's global foreign policy
strategy."
Skeptics warn, however, that
Gorbachev may be merely trying
to put the West off guard. That the
Kremlin has not embarked on any
new enterprises in the Third World
since its 1979 Afghan invasion may
be more because of lack of opportu-
nity than because of a deliberate
lwlicy, they say, and new Soviet
incursions cannot be ruled out if
the reward is sufficiently great.
Despite the lure of improved
U.S.-Soviet relations, for example,
the Soviets might be tempted to
intervene in Iran after the Ayatol-
lah Ruhollah Khomeini's rule ends
or to provide arms to black nation-
alists in southern Africa if the
South African government appears
threatened with collapse.
The Soviets have had major wins
and losses in the former colonial
world since World War II, when
Moscow began with no friends or
allies in those areas. The two
gravest disappointments were Chi-
na's disaffection and the loss of
Egypt. But Cuba, Vietnam and
North Korea represent the oldest
and most firmly established victo-
rits, and 13 other lesser client
nations call themselves Marxist-
Leninist.
The best example of recent Sovi -
et restraint, Fukuyama said, is
Mozambique, where the Marxist
government in Maputo signed a
nonaggression pact with South Af-
rica in 1984, probably because
Moscow failed to protect it against
South Africa despite the "friend-
ship and cooperation" treaty be-
twet:o the two nations. "Soviet
passivity has allowed Maputo to
gradually slide into the South Afri-
can orbit;' he said.
Els"where. Moscow's behavior
has been more ambivalent. In Lib-
ya, the Soviets stayed out of the
crossfire between the United
Stites and Libyan-strongman Mo-
anunar Kadafi that climaxed in the
17 :3. raid on :hipo!i and Bei ghazi in
Alm- They publicly criticized Ka-
dafi's brand of terrorism, but they
also quickly resupplied the
long-range surface-to-air missiles
and other arms destroyed by U.S.
warplanes.
Even in Afghanistan, despite
Gor'bachev's professed desire to
end the war, the Soviets have
replaced Babrak Karrlal in Kabul
with Najib, who seems willing to
risk expanding the war into Paki-
stan with deliberate cross-border
aircraft incursions and terrorist
bombings against Afghan rebel
bases ti ere.
Moscow itself has threatened
Pakistan, ostensibly to prevent it
from developing a nuclear device,
in a manner so brash that the
United States felt compelled to
remind the Soviets of its commit-
ment to Pakistan's security. Yet
now, Gorbachev has offered the
withdrawal of six regiments-be-
tween 6,000 and 10,000 men, by
Western estimates-to speed up
the peace process.
More for Cuba
And in some corners of the globe,
the Soviets seem more aggressive
than ever. Despite economic prob-
lems at home, their aid to Vietnam,
North Korea, and Syria has not
slackened, and Cuba recently an-
nounced that it will receive a 50%
boost in Soviet economic credits for
the next five years. Cuba had been
getting $4 billion a year in econom-
ic aid plus $1 billion a year in
military aid, according to U.S. esti-
mates.
The increase for Havana could
be ominous-The last major rise in
Soviet aid occurred between 1976
and 1979, when Soviet aid jumped
almost three-fold as Cuban troops
began serving as Soviet proxies in
Angola, Ethiopia and other African
and Latin American nations.
In other regions. tao, the Soviets
have not let lm:
-In Angola, after a major offen-
sive by the U.S.-backed insurgents,
Soviet aid to the Marxist regime
has increased. The size of the
Cuban force there has doubled in
recent years. "When we upped the
ante, they did, too," said one U.S:
official, "as if Gorbachev cannot
afford to be shown to have lost
Angola."
-In Nicaragua, the Soviets have
guaranteed oil supplies and extend.'
ed new economic credits to the
Sandinista regime since Gorbachev
took over, and for the first time
they are shipping materiel directly
from their ports without going
through Cuba. New military sup-
plies include 12 new transport
helicopters that can be equipped as
gunships and the temporary as-
signment of an Aeroflot aerial
mapping plane.
-Even in the South Pacific, long
a "U.S. lake," the Soviets have
entered into an uneconomic fishing
agreement with Kiribati (formerly
the Gilbert Islands) and estab-
lished diplomatic relations with
Vanuatu, another new island na-
tion. The "Asian and Pacific direc-
tion," Gorbachev told the party
congress, is taking on "ever grow-
ing importance" in Soviet foreign
policy.
Beyond economic and military
assistance to the Third World, the
Soviets continue to develop a major
"force projection" capability that
would allow its own troops to
intervene far from their shores.
Once the Soviet Union maintained
a coastal defense navy, but now
Soviet fleets sail all oceans with
small aircraft carriers and major
landing vessels.
Since Soviet pilots flew in the
Yemen civil war in 1967, Soviet
military personnel have been dis-
patched to Cuba, Angola, Ethiopia
and Vietnam and are now fighting
in Afghanistan. The Soviets, wrote
Rand analyst Harry Gelman, have
"incrementally achieved a
far-flung political and military
presence in the underdeveloped
world."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12119: CIA-RDP9O-00965RO00706780007-0