The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-Alignment in the Third World

Over the last thirty years Soviet leaders have sought to coordinate Soviet foreign policy in a variety of ways with the policies pursued by the large group of Third World countries lying outside the Eastern and Western alliance systems, the non-aligned states. This study is the first to investigate the overall Soviet conception of non-alignment in the Third World and to assess Soviet policy in relation to this issue. The author argues that official Soviet encouragement for the policy of non-alignment and Soviet support for the programme of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1960s and 1970s have been part of a broad Soviet strategy aimed at weakening and ultimately supplanting Western military and political ties with Third World states. Soviet officials have been reluctant, therefore, to view neutrality, nuetralism or non-alignment as concepts or policies which denote an intermediate status between the blocs. This study assesses the implications of such perceptions for Soviet policy and considers how far Soviet leaders have accepted the independent foreign policy aspirations of non-aligned states. It analyses the Soviet reaction to the collective agenda of the non-aligned states on issues such as the limitation of conflict, disarmament and the promotion of a new international economic offer. This book also provides the first detailed account of contemporary Soviet policy towards the possible neutralisation of distinct Third World regions: Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. The final section of the book examines Soviet attitudes and foreign policy in relation to the primary elements of North/South military alignment: military bases, alliances and treaties of friendship and cooperation. Attention is given to changes in Soviet policy on all these issues under the new Gorbachev leadership. The book concludes that over several decades the Soviet Union has sought to use neutralism, non-alignment and neutralisation primarily as instruments in a broad strategy aimed at the military denial of Third World regions to the Western powers.