Ideology and Learning in Soviet Third World Policy

Abstract

SINCE World War II, Soviet policy in the Third World has gone through regular, frequent cycles, marked by different emphases in the choice of foreign policy targets and by different expectations about the nature and magnitude of the gain to be had from foreign policy initiatives. Stalin was generally disinterested in global competition in regions that were assumed to be dominated by the “imperialist” camp; he tended (with some exceptions) to deny support to nationalist regimes and radical social movements alike. Khrushchev's break-out into the Third World in the 1950's focused on nationalist regimes (India, Indonesia, Ghana, etc.) as well as radical social movements (“national liberation movements”); it was based on the expectation that, in the near future, there would be a large number of socialist states in the Third World, and that they would become allies of the socialist camp against the imperialist camp.

The Operational Codes of Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sung: The Last Cold Warriors?

“…1 Questioning the validity of structural explanations is, of course, not new to international relations scholarship. Scholars have convincingly argued that structural explanations do not sufficiently explain the Soviet dissolution (Breslauer, 1987(Breslauer, , 1992Breslauer & Tetlock, 1991;Evangelista, 1991;Lebow, 1994). Instead, it is often argued that the "new thinking" policies were the result of changes made within the Soviet leadership, led by Mikhail Gorbachev, who has been described as an "uncommitted thinker and motivated learner" (Stein, 1994).…”

“Pax Americana” Is a Myth: Aversion to War Drives Peace and Order

“…They were, at first, quite gleeful-the "correlation of forces," as they called it, had decisively and most agreeably shifted in their direction. 25 However, almost all soon became economic and political basket cases, fraught with dissension, financial mismanagement, and civil warfare, most notably in Afghanistan. 26 In the end, although the United States did ardently seek to oppose the ideology and its appeals, Communism ultimately self-destructed.…”

Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration

“…Partly out of fear of repeating the Vietnam experience, the United States went into a sort of containment funk and watched from the sidelines as the Soviet Union, in what seems in retrospect to have been remarkably like a fit of absent mindedness, opportunistically gathered a set of Third World countries into its imperial embrace: Angola in 1976, Mozambique and Ethiopia in 1977, South Yemen and Afghanistan in 1978, and Grenada and Nicaragua in 1979. The Soviets at first were quite gleeful about these acquisitions—the “correlation of forces,” they concluded, had magically and decisively shifted in their direction (Breslauer, 1987:436–437)…”