THE SOVIET UNION IN THE THIRD WORLD: PURPOSE IN SEARCH OF POWER

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• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP93B01478R000100130001-4
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• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
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• Publication Date: April 1, 1969
• Content Type: MISC

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THE SOVIET UNION IN THE THIRD WORLD:
PURPOSE IN SEARCH 01 PM ER
April 1969
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THE SOVIET UNION IN THE THIRD WORLD:
PURPOSE IN SEARCH OF POWER
Fritz Ermarth
The RAND Corporation, Santa 'Monica, California
ABSTRACT
Although the Soviet Union inherited its ideological
commitment to revolution in the Third World from Lenin,
it was only in Khrushchev's tine, after industrialization
and victcry in World 'Jar II had made the USSR a world
power, that this commitment became an important component
of Soviet foreign policy. Khrushchev envisaged a fairly
rapid transition by postcolonial states toward socialism,
i.e., toward Soviet-type societies and close association
with the Sc?:iet international bloc. This "objectively
inevitable" process was to be guided by the example of
Soviet national development, protected From the depreda-
tions of imperialism by the deterrent shield of Soviet
strategic power, and accelerated by a modicum of Soviet
economic and military aid. But Khrushchev's vision
exceeded the USSR's power to fulfill it. The developmental
process proved to be extremely difficult. Nationalists in
Fritz Ermarth, MA, Pacific Palisades, California, is
a member of the Social Science Department of The 'AND
Corporation and a specialist on Soviet foreign and military
policy. Any views expressed in this paper are those of the
author. They should not be interpreted as reflc.~.:ting the
views of The RAND Corporation or the official policy or
opinion of any of its governmental or private research
sponsors. Papers are reproduced by The RAND Corporation
as a courtesy to members of its staff.
This paper was prepared for publication in The Annals.
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1. 4
power throughout the Third World, even those close to the
USSR, advanced their own visions of the future, often at
variance with Soviet views. And the Western powers were
not restrained from intervening actively in the Third
World where their interests were at stake. Khrushchev's
successors have been less sanguine about the process and
the timetable of transition in tie Third World. They have
tended to concentrate more heavily on specific areas of
the Third World they deem important, the Middle East and
South Asia. They have also been more willing than
Khrushchev to intervene, albeit very cautiously, in Third
World military conflicts directly or indirectly involving
the United States, as in Vietnam and the Middle East.
Only the future will show whether they use their increased
power with the restraint that weakness imposed upon them
in the past.
Moscow has been interested in the Third Wcrld from
the very birth of the Soviet state. Lenin's views on the
socio-economic roots of politics and, even more, his
analysis of the prevailirg international order, advanced
in Imperialism, imparted ro the Boloheviks a profound
sensitivity to the revolutionary potential of the East.
Despite their inevitable preoccupation with Europe, as
Professor Ulam has written, "from the beginning, the
premises of Soviet-Comintern policy in the East and what
is now known generally as the underdeveloped world were
sounder than in the case of Europe." Lenin's ultimate
"Adorn B. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: The History
of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917??1967, Frederick A. Praeger,
New
York,
1968, p.
125.
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hopes that the postcolonial revolution would contribute
substantially, even decisively, to the collapse of the
capitalist order can be deemed illusory. His more
proximate anticipation, that decolonization would revo-
lutionize the international system, was thoroughly real-
istic. But not only was the Third World revolution just
beginning in earnest, the Soviet Union of Lenin's day
clearly did not possess the power to guide or shape this
revolution in any meaningful way. And, while he quickly
adjusted to the doctrinal and diplomatic demands of Real-
politik, Lenin never fully made the tran.;ition to the
view that Soviet state power represented the r.entral
ingredient of the revolutionary process on a world scale.
Stalin completed this transition with a vengeance:
revolution became synonymous wi:`i Soviet state power.
Anything which was beyond or did not contribute directly
to that power was inherently suspect, if not r?actionary.
At the same time, Stalin's foreign policy was cautious in
practice and extremely defensive in motivation. It was
designed to protect the process of torced industrializa-
tion from military threats arising out of Europe and Japan.
By achieving industrialization and by filling the terri-
torial vacuums of Europe lest by the defeat of Nazi Germany,
Stalin did indeed revolutionize the Eurasian and hence the
world balance of power.
But it remained in essence a continental operation.
As important as the vacuums on Soviet borders which the
war created and permitted Soviet power to fill were those
developing as a result of the war in colonial Asia and
Africa, in which arose the nationalist movements and regimes
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which so dominated events of the ensuing two decades. In
most un-Leninist style, Stalin at first showed no real
interest in the opportunities opening to Soviet policy in
the colonial areas. He was not in them militarily; he
could not get into them without undue risk. He was notably
suspicious of his own ability to control his only ocher
instrument for projecting Soviet influence into these
regions, local Communist parties, even where they were
strong enough to be relevant. Toward the very end or his
life, he began a general reappraisal of Soviet policy,
including that toward the distant colonial world. His
death interrupted this reappraisal but his successors
completed it.
KHRUSIICHE.' `S THIRD WORLD VIS!GNS
Preceded by doctrinal revisions commencing as early
as 1952, tFe new "Eastern" Policy of Stalin's successors
was effectivc.'_y instituted in 1955, the year of Bandung,
when Khrushchev and Bulganin went to Asia and Soviet arms
began appearing in the Middle East. In a very real sense
one can say that the Kremlin leaders resurrected for their
foreign policy the ethos of world revolution which had
perished at the gates of Warsaw in 1920 and had been buried
under "socialism in one country."
Doctrindll.y, the Soviets elevated the anticolonial
metamorphosis, rcstcolonial nation-building, and economic
See Marshall D. Shulna r., Stalin's Foreign Policy
Reappraisal, Harvard University Precs, Cambridge, 1963,
passim.
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development -- all under the heading.of the national
liberation revolution -- to the status of a component
part of the world revolutionary process. The building
of communism/socialism in communist states, the natic:ial.
liberation revolution, and the struggle of the working
class in capitalist states were seen as comprising this
process. They recognized the "national bourgeois ".e,"
i.e., local nationalists who were not workers or peasants,
as an "objectively progressive" and, indeed, leading
force, where they had previously been rejected as agents
of the colonial pcwers. They searched around, rather
urnuccessfull_y, for doctrinal constructs according to
which they could confidently .iescribe the transition of -
the nnwl_v independent states toward socialism as they con-
ceivc-d it. A preponderant role in this transition was
assigned to the force of the Soviet example as a develcping
society. The role of local communist parties rc^tiained
ambiguous in Soviet doctrine for a variety of reasons.
Finally, they declareu that the growing nuclear power of
the USSR represented a stout shield that prevented the
military intervention of the imperialists against the
national liberation ciuvement, often citing the Middle East
crisis of the mid- and late 1950s as representative. For
example, according to a basic doctrinal handbook of thE:
late 1950s:
The postwar years have convincingly demonstrated
the role of the socialist states as a mighty
factor of restraint against the aggressiveness
of the imperialists who, in ether circumstances,
would fall on the national liberation movement
with all their power and crush it.''
''0snovy Marksizma-Leninizma, Moscow, 1959, p. 454.
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In practice, the policy involved a broadly based
Soviet penetration of the underdeveloped world, involving
a variety of d.plomatic, economic, semiofficial political
and military aid activities. The total silhouette of the
Soviet political prc:se.ice in the underdeveloped world was
markedly raised. In ultimate political terms, the Soviets
saw their goal as the e:cpulsion of Western influence from
these regions and their gradual gravitation into the
socialist camp or con,.aonwealth.
Initially, th?:? Soviets were confiaent that the
systematic revolution in the Third World could ba largely
.self-sustaining, that its favorable progres. would little
Lax their economic, even less their military resources.
In any case they had little 5 t_':ese to spare. During
the decade 1954-64 Soviet economic credits and grants to
non-communist underdeveloped countries totaled slightly
more than $4 billion, of which only about $1.5 billion
had actually been drawn. " By the end of 1964, S :?viet
military assistance, mostly in the form of long-term
credits, had been extended to more than 15 countries but
at a total volume probably not much over $3 billion.
During the period 1946-1965, total U.S. economic and
military eid to less developed areas exceeded $100 billion.
In the Rain the Soviets hoped to accelerate and guide by
political means an indigenous process.
Currert Economic Indicators for the USSR, Joint
Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, GPO,
Washington, D.C., June 1965, p. 174.
The Soviet Military Aid Program as a Reflection of
Soviet Objectives, Georgetown Research Project. Atlantic
Research Corporation, June 1965, passim.
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This simplified picture characterized Soviet policy
toward the Third World from 1955 to 1960-62. It comple-
mented Soviet concentration on internal economic progress,
the construction of a viable nuclear deterrent, and a
modulated detente with the West which kept the risk of war
low while offering opportunities to press objectives in
Europe. It projected Soviet power and influence into the
Third World for the first :i.me, and it did so cheaply.
No doubt, when Khrnnshchev contemplated the Third World in
detail, he saw many disturbing co:aplexities. But he felt
confident in the sweep of history.
PROBLEMS OF VIOLENCE, CREDIBILITYAND CONTROL
From 1960 onward, the complexities eroded the basis
for Soviet confidence. Two fundamental problems arose
which challenged the relevance of the Soviet approach to
the Third World, both connected with and aggravated by
the growing Sino-Soviet rift. One remained essentially a
doctrinal matter, but. extended discussion of it, which is
still going on, indicated that important leaders were
worrying about the future of policy. The Soviets began
to wonder, now that the colonial empires had largely dis-
appeared, how in fact the transition from the nationalist
to the socialist phase of the revolution is to take place.
They saw nationalists acquire power who, while anti-
Western, had their own notions about the future, recipro-
cated Soviet opportunism in their dealings with Moscow,
and showed no inclination to step aside for the "objective
laws of history" or to tolerate alternatives to their rule
in local Communist parties. Notwithstanding Moscow's
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historic unconcern about the fate of local parties
when state issues were at stake, the latter problem
became urgent in the competition with Peking. Although
a variety of ingenious formulae have been invoked, such
as "national democracy," "revolutionary democracy," and
the "noncapitalist path," and cautiously ascribed to a
changing number of developing countries, a satisfactory
model for postcolonial development has yet to be worked
out by the Soviets." In practice, this doctrinal question
has not been demonstrably influential in shaping immediate
Soviet policy in the underdeveloped world, but it has
weighed upon the minds of a leadership which appeals
consciously to an historical Weltanschauung for its
legitimacy and political aims.
The second problem which emerged around 1960 was far
more vexatious and pertinent to immediate action: the
problem of violence in the revolutionary process and
Soviet support for it. The Soviet position on violence
and the use of military power in the Third World, which
stressed peaceful revolution behind a deterrent shield and
limited Soviet military aid largely to established govern-
ments in low-risk. situations, came under attack on two
fronts. On one hand, the Chinese began to attack it
bitterly as representing excessive caution at best or
treason to the cause at worst. Peaceful paths, they
insisted, are possible only in exceptional circumstances;
See Uri Ra'anan, "Moscow and the Third World," Prob-
lems of Communism, January-February 1965, pp. 22-31; and
Robert F. Lamberg, "Moskau and die Dritte Welt: Vorzuege
and Gefahren ?ies Pluralismus," Osteuropa, January 1968,
pp. 792-802.
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and growing Soviet nuclear power now broadens the scope
for armed struggle by inhibiting the response of imper-
ialism. To this, the Soviets replied by backing deeper
into the doctrinal box of deterrence: the deterrent
shield is strong, therefore peaceful methods are to be
preferred as less costly, and less dangerous, unless the
imperialists intervene. They began admitting at this
point that their nuclear posture was not as formidable a
barrier as earlier declared.
Khrushchev outlined the Soviet case on armed conflict
in the nuclear age in his commentary on the 1960 Moscow
Declaration of 81 Communist Parties, itself an ambiguous
document. First, general nuclear war would he an unmiti-
gated catastrophe and must ne avoided. Moreover,
despite the unchanged aggressiveness of imperialism,
Soviet strength makes such avoidance possible. Second,
local conflicts are very dangerous because escalation is
likely, and virtually certain if nuclear powers g^t
involved. Third, national liberation wars, local
revolutionaries fighting local reactionaries, are
possible and just; Moscow must "support" them when they
occur. It is one of the major ironies of our time that
this thesis was totally misread by the new Kennedy
Administration as a wholesale Soviet endorsement of sub-
liminal violence in the Third World. It meant precisely
the opposite, as the Chinese lost no time .n pointing out.
Khrushchev was keenly aware, and hoped others would be as
well, that the line between national liberation and local
wars had to be an obscure one, especially if great power
interests became involved. National liberation struggles
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could easily become local wars, which could easily
escalate to general war, in spite of Moscow's proclaimed
nuclear might. This was as powerful a brief for caution
in the use of violence and as explicit an admission of
Soviet weakness as Khrushchev could bring himself to make.
As a general principle, he did not want national libera-
tion wars and, if they had to occur, he di.d not want to
get involved militarily. In practice, he deviated from
this doctrine under pressure of events, but only slightly
as the very cautious behavior of the Soviets in the
Congo, in Laos, and in Vietnam through lc,64 indicates.
Unfortunately for ;hrushchev, his line was not persuasive
in Peking and not understood in Washington.
The Kennedy Administration, impelled among other
things by its reading of the Soviet line, mounted the
second challenge to Khrushchev's position by rapidly
developing the capability and declaring the intention to
intervene directly against insurgent movements it believed
communist-inspired or otherwise dangerous. Indeed, it
expanded American capabilities for action across the
entire spectrum of limited conflict situations while
dramatically fortifying its posture for general nuclear
war.
The strategic basis for Khrushchev's optir'ism of the
1955-59 period was further weakened by the Cuban missile
crisis. Tha core of Soviet strategic posture was demon-
strably too weak to sustain an assertive foreign policy
This reading of Khrushchev's "national liberation
doctrine" is elaborated in the author's master's thesis,
"Current Soviet Doctrine on National Liberation," 1963, on
deposit in the Russian Research Center, Harvard University.
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in Europe and the Third World. i(lrushchev reacted by
retrenching his foreign policy objectives, seeking detente
with the United States, and turning his major attention to
civilian economic development and an effort to stem the
disintegration of international communism.
Developments between 1962 and 1964 in Southeast Asia
also inflicted considerable damage on the pattern of
political assumptions and perceptions supporting
Khrushchev's policy. Despite a substantial material and
political investment in the region, in In--onesia,
K-hrushchev adhered to his position of disengagement from
the armed conflicts of Indochina. The Soviets did supply
limited military assistance to the insuc,-nt movements in
Laos and Vietnam during this period, bu' such as it was,
it seemed aimed primarily at retaining sct le,,erage
against escalation. In Vietnam, however, the conflict
did escalate, and it became a test case on -.;hick the
Soviet position was hliehly vulnerable. it proved
that neither Soviet military power at the ti-ener:+l nuclear
level nor Soviet restraint in local theaters )f conflict
could prevent the growing intervention of the United
States. Second, it seemed to prove that a properly
managed armed insurgency cou'.d succeed against local
resistance massively support i by the C ted States.
Third, if a major risk was involved at this point, it was
that of U.S. attacks on North Vietnam which would bring
into play quasi-alliance responsibilities to a communist
state. As events proceeded, especially after the Tonkin
episode of August 1964, Khrushchev's stance of disengage-
alent appeared to look more and more like the appeasement
which Peking always insisted it was. Khrushchev fell from
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power fcr a va.':iety of reasons, but this was probably one
of they:;. The n ?w leadership promised to take a new look at
its relations with China and its policy on Vietnam.
To assert that the disintegration of Khrushchev's
policy toward the Third World represented its failure in
a literal sense would obviously be inappropriate. At worst,
his reach considerably exceeded his grasp; but his grasp
was sufficient to bring a substantial penetration of Soviet
influence in areas geographically important to the USSR and
among elite groups playing vital roles throughout the under-
developed world. The weakness of the Khru:;hchev policy was
the intellectual weakness of Marxism, its ovar-reliance on
the operation of self-generated conception:. of historical
inevitability. The policy as a whole rested heavily o; the
"objective necessity" of the post-colonial revolution mov-
ing of its own momentum toward socialism and all this
meant for Lhu Soviets in of domestic and inter-
national alignments. Nationalism was one difficulty. The
Soviets did not underestimate its power; on the contrary,
they bet heavily on it. But they ignored its capacity to
generate its own political visions, including visions of
'Arab," "African-," and other "socialisms'- which sorely
troubled doctrinal monopolists in Moscow. The volatility
of politics within developing countries was another factor
they underestimated, largely as a result of their ideo-
logically motivated search for "class forces." And they
found many of their early convictions about economic
development to be excessively optimistic.
Essentially the problem was one of power. In a decade
of intensive effort, the Soviets exercised the ability to
penetrate and operate in the underdeveloped world, but
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they could not shape it. In political, socio-economic,
and military terms, the events and developments over %.hich
they could exert determining influence seemed far out-
ranked In importance by those which were beyond their
control.
PRAGMATISM SINCE F3-iRUSHCiiEV
Developments confronting Soviet policy in the Third
World since 1964 have contributed further to the sobering
le_scor,, oeing drawn in the years just before Khrushchev's
fall. In addition, there have been some rather rude
shocks. Among the latter must be numbered the early
''bases of the U.S. bombing campaign against North :'ietr.ar,i
in 1965, and the June 1967 Middle East war. In Viet:am,
the United States seemed able to attack a socialist
st.:t. with impunity. In the Middle East the Soviets
found their fully armed clients unable to defend them-
selves against a numerically inferior opponent. Moscow's
Third World "deterrent shield" looked disturbingly thin.
Equally shocking to Moscow were a series of political
coups in underdeveloped countries of Africa and Asia
which removed leaders highly favored by Moscow,
foremost among whom were Ben Bella of Algeria and Nkrumah
of Ghana, and testified to the political fragility of
states Moscow had deemed traversing the "noncapitalist
path" to socialism. In fact, these events, coupled with
rising pressure on Soviet authority in Eastern Europe,
produced a somewhat hysterical doctrinal reaction against
what Moscow perceived as the "global counterattack of
imperialism."
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Other trends were less dramatic but unsettling,
nevertheless, Moscow found large segments of the Third
World, including the elites of countries with which rela-
ticns were cordial, such as India, moving into positions
of truculent and, to Moscow's mind, undiscriminating
irritation toward both the superpowers. The USSR was
lumped with the United States Rs part of the prosperous
North and found for that reason to owe the developing
South more extensive economic aid. Similarly annoying
to the Soviets was the view, which "has also gained
currency among political leaders of some developing
states," that Soviet support for the nonproliferation
treaty represented a dictatorial condominium of the
superpowers.* Finally, each passing year of continued
backwardness and population growth in the underdeveloped
world, plus technological and economic progress in the
industrialized world, seemed to lengthen enormously the
time perspective in which the former could be seen as
moving toward socialism.
All was not uniformly gloomy, however. If Moscow's
performance in defense of the national liberation movement
failed to measure up to previously proclaimed standards,
these failings did not redound to the undiluted benefit of
*As evidence of Moscow's annoyance over this, see
Soviet comment surrounding UNCTAD's 1968 sessions and,
inter alia, A. Kodachenko, "The Developing Countries and
Economic Progress," Ekonomicheskaya Gazeta, No. 10, March
1969, p. 45.
1. Shatalov, "The Leninist Foreign Policy and the
National Liberation Movement," International Affairs, No.
1, January 1969, p. 74.
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i_
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the United Stites. The Soviets found that with patience
and good luck, mainly in the form of American restraint,
they could recover lost ground or at least cut losses.
In Vietnam, the Soviets found that they could provide
military support which may have.been as critical to the
endurance of Hanoi as U.S. intervention in 1965 was
deemed critical to the survival of the Saigon government.
The United States could intervene with force, but it could
not win; and stalemate in Vietnam seemed to. be undermining
the entire American commitment to the Third World. In the
Middle East, expensive as it was to redeem the losses of
the June war, the net effect within a year of the dramatic
setback seemed to be an augmented Soviet position in the
region.
The patient diplomacy of the Brezhnev-Kosygin regime
in a number of Third. World states consolidated existing
positions and opened new ones. The USSR managed to improve
its relations with Pakistan without serious damage to
Soviet-Indian relations and even facilitated contr.-;. of
conflict between the two neighbors through the Tashkent
summit. Both Turkey and Iran were co,irted with consider-
able success, a trend that the USSR hoped would improve
its position in the Middle East and vis-a-vis NATO. Even
Latin America, a region of the Third World hitherto most
likely to be termed a U.S. preserve, was proving suscep-
tible to Soviet diplomatic and commercial blandishments.
Another trend which certainly encouraged the Soviets,
although hardly a function of their own behavior, was the
progressive political isolation of China in the Third
World as a result of her intemperate behavior and the
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I. e
-regions-of the Third World.
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. A similar if
somewhat less prominent development was a slight ebbing
of Castroite appeal in Latin America upon the failure of
Guevara's Bolivian adventure. Both cases represented a.
reduction of pressure from the left upon, first, Moscow's
political ties to communist parties in the Third World,
and, second, upon Moscow's doctrinal disinclination to
grant the tactics-of guerrilla insurgency a blanket
endorsement. The threat of "ultra leftism" among Moscow's
coreligionists and doctrinal allies remained, but became
somewhat more diffuse.
Finally, a plus not to be discounted was the growing
intellectual sophii.tication of Soviet thinking about the
Third World. Khrushchev's doctrinal optimism of the late
fifties and early sixties was reflected in and reinforced
by scholarship and journalism founded on equally unjusti-
fiable optimism. But under the impact of specific
reversals and disillusionments,- Soviet observers tended to
become more sensitive to the political, social, and
economic "complexities" at work in the Third World. (The
term slozhnosti or. "complexities" is a sure sign that
difficulties are being encountered which do not fit the
desired pattern.) If-one takes seriously the private
claims voiced by many Soviet social scientists and area
specialists that.they have lately: enjoyed improved access
to decision makers, one wo-_:ld assume that this sophistica-
tion contributed to tr.: caution of Soviet policy in many
4.
See Elizabeth Kr-idl Valkenier, "Recent Trends in
Soviet Research..on the Developing Countries," World Poli-
tics, 'July ' 1968, pp. 644 ff.
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As the Soviet leaders have drawn a running tally of
their recent experiences, they appear to have developed
a number of rough operational guidelines to shape their
Third World policies:
(1) They have seen lit to concentrate their atten-
tion and resources geographically. The Arab World, from
Morocco to the Persian Gulf, and South Asia, from Iran to
India, represent the high-priority targets for Soviet
diplomatic, economic, and military efforts. Latin
America, Subsaharan Africa, and Southeast Asia (apart
from Vietnam) are clearly accorded a lower priority. Of
course, the concentration of Soviet attention in the Arab
world and South Asia is not new; it was prevalent under
Khrushchev. But it has noticeably incrcasn; under his
successors. For example, according to data published by
the U.S. State Department, new extensions of economic
credit and grants to the Arab/Mediterranean area ;includ-
ing Turkey and Sudan) and South Asia increased from about
80?%o of total new extensions to underdeveloped countries
during 1954-1964 to about 90% in the years 1965-1967, even
though five additional aid recipients were added in other
areas. Were recent data on military assistance available,
the concentration might be even more marked. Although
much of the shift is accounted for by the deterioration
of Soviet-Indonesian relations after 1965, and does not
include Soviet aid to North Vietnam. the trend is never-
theless noteworthy.
U.S. Department of State, Director of Intelligence
and Research, Research Memorandum, "Communist Governments
and Developing Nations: Aid,and Trade in 1965," RSB-50,
June 17, 1966; and "...in 1967," RSB-120, August 14, 1965.
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0
The reasons for r
These are -his choice are fairly obvious.
regions where successful
been past investment
made and can be protected, s have
them some strafe Their location
gic importance gives
European and in relation
anti-Chinese to Moscow
seen to offer targets goals. The other
of regions are
sional e opportunity for low-cost, rather than co.,t, occa-
(2) The a sustained campaign.
Soviets remain convinced
present, their interests that, for the
intra- will not generally
cr international be served by
The,, violence in the Third World,
are even more
convinced t';at
occur, their sup?prt of it or ' should such violence
he most Participation in it must
circumspect, Indicative
Soviet rejoinder of this mood
to calls is a recent
in for more military involvement
national li')eration conflicts:
Twice in the lifetime
people Lought with unexaOf ,
mone generation
against pif. J Soviet
the principal eRnr y and valor
aggression, savin the t ores l imperizli;,t
The Soviet Union g has never Shand all rtianki
intend s never shirked n`~'
to shirk its respn;~, and does not
and world progress. But th j does for peace
the , of OeS not
that the principle military Support smeou
itionall afar ' Y be made absolute,
~, ic weapons, calls to In the e age of
age of
imperialism by the mil Se`tle
Socialist scores with
itary might of the
The countries are extremely reckless.
Y conceal.
evade their ..the desire of their authors
own duty of creating ,
mass anti-imperialist movng a a Powerful,
fulement,'
Des , ? to t
his general stance,indirectly however, to engage itself dee , the USSR has seen
Fly, if ft
in two Third World'
Ibid., P. 72.
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_19-
(3) On a doctrinal plane, the Soviets seem compara-
tively disinclined to advance elaborate models of the
developmental process which describe the transition of
post-colonial, backward societies to some form of
socialism. They are eager to understand the developmental
process and even to prescribe, ez cathedra, the paths
which they insist sooner or later must be taken to assure
the real emergence of the emerging nations. The "revolu-
tionary democracy;"' with its mass-based radical. politics,
the "noncapitalist path," with its so:ialized and Soviet-
oriented economics, remain meaningful symbols of the true
way. The Soviets are still troubled by the almost uniform
refusal of their noncommunist favorites to tolerate the
participation of communist parties in their countries'
politics. But in theory, they are prepared to admit
in the Indian Ocean.
conflicts fraught with risks of escalation. It concluded
that the risks in Vietnam and the Middle East were manage-
able and the costs of disengagement would be too high to
bear. It may learn from these conflicts that its past
inhibitions about limited conflict in third areas are
unjustifiably confining in an environment of increased
Soviet strategic and regional power. Furthermore, it has
diverted scarce resources to the expansion of its capa-
bility to establish a visible military presence in third
areas, in the Mediterranean and, so far only` intermittently,
See Thomas W. Wolfe, The Soviet Quest for More
Globally Mobile Military Power, The RAND Corporation,
Santa Monica, December 1967.
On these doctrinal themes, see K. Brutents, "On
Revolutionary Democracy," Mirovaia Ekonomika i
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that the developmental process will be long and complex,
not susceptible to detailed prognostications at the
present time. And in practice, these doctrinal issues,
while reflecting the concern of many communist decision-
makers with things ultimate, do not impose real con-
straints on Soviet foreign policy.
CONCLUSIONS AND REFLECTIONS
Soviet policy, like everything else, manifests con-
tinuity and change at any given moment. The present Soviet
rulers are the legitimate heirs of Lenin's conviction that
the Third World is an arena of revolutionary transformation
in which vital elements cf the ?:)timate world political
order are being forged. They inherit from Stalin, among
other ti::_ngs, the conviction ~F-.at augmentation of Soviet
state power is the main vehicle of world revolution. This
imposes upon them general ra"r;cal cautiousness in foreign
affairs and a set of international priorities in which
Soviet internal development, the strategic relationship
with the United States, and interests in Europe come
before goals in the Third World. Nevertheless, as a
result of their cumulative inheritance, today their power
to act upon, if not necessarily to shape, the international
environment, including the Third World, is far greater
than in the past. And, as a result of Khrushchev's ambi-
tious policies, they are committed to vital areas of the
Third World in strength.
Mezhdunarodniya Otnosheniya, No. 3, March 1968, p. 15 if
and No. 4, April 1968, pp. 24 ff; and Ye. Zhukov, "The
National LibEration Movement of the Peoples of Asia and
Africa," Kommunist, No. 4, March 1969. pp. 31 ff.
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6
mf
In short, the USSR is becoming, in the sense that
the United States has been for nearly three decades, a
truly global power, perceiving interests and possessing
strength which easily dominates the local powers in many
areas of the Third World. It is beginning to acquire the
power to match the universal pretentions born with the
Soviet state itself. The vital question: upon attaining
such power, after a half century of containment and self-
conscious inferiority, will the USSR be as conscious of
the limitations of power in the Third World as the United
States has become at no insignificant cost? History, as
usual, does not offer a confident answer.
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