7 - Soviet power without influence?

Summary

What happened in the Ogaden should serve as an object lesson for the future, not only for imperialist fanciers of using others to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, but also for those who allow such imperialists to lead them by the nose.

(Pravda, 19 March 1978)

It is immoral to throw hundreds of millions of dollars into the development of homicide means when millions starve and are devoid of everyday necessities.

(Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the CPSU cited in M. Volkov ‘Militarisation Versus Development’, Asia and Africa Today, No 5, 1987, p. 9)

At the outset of this study it was observed that the concept of intervention in international affairs described a situation where a state (or a combination of states) deviates from the norm of existing relations, and attempts to impose its will on an apparently weaker country in order to realise some political, moral or legal objective within a limited period of time. But for a state to intervene in the affairs of another it must have both the motive and opportunity to do so. While motivations and circumstances vary, the act of intervention is always distinguished by the exercise of power. To intervene is to use power. However, power is a very general concept and has many dimensions, only one of which is military force. That being so, an intervening state can rarely be certain in advance whether the resources at its disposal will be sufficient to secure compliance with its objectives in the target state. Thus, intervention involves risk. The decision ‘to go in’ is basically a political one. But interventions can and do go wrong.