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Ideology and Learning in Soviet Third World Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

George W. Breslauer
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Extract

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.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , April 1987 , pp. 429 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1977

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References

1 For useful surveys of the historical evolution of Soviet policy in the Third World, see Hosmer, Stephen T. and Wolfe, Thomas W., Soviet Policy and Practice Toward Third World Conflicts (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1982)Google Scholar, and Saivetz, Carol R. and Woodby, Sylvia, Soviet-Third World Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985).Google Scholar

2 For a trenchant discussion of analytic problems in much literature on this topic, see Adomeit, Hannes, “Ideology in the Soviet View of International Affairs”, in Bertram, Christoph, ed., Prospects of Soviet Power in the 1980s (London: Macmillan, 1980), 103–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 In suggesting that we think of ideologies as four-dimensional, I am following George, Alexander, “Ideology and International Relations: A Conceptual Analysis”, paper prepared for a conference on “Ideology and Its Influence on International Politics” (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, January 7–9, 1985)Google Scholar. My labels for the dimensions differ from George's, as does my specification of the content of each dimension. Other terms could be used to characterize what I am calling “ideology“. “World-view” and “elite political culture” perhaps come closest. For a catalogue of the numerous ways in which the term ideology has been used in social science, see Putnam, Robert D., “Studying Elite Political Culture: The Case of ‘Ideology’”, American Political Science Review 65 (September 1971), 651–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 For the classic catalogue of the components of that tradition, see Leites, Nathan, The Operational Code of the Politburo (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951)Google Scholar, and his A Study of Bolshevism (Glencoe, IL.: The Free Press, 1953)Google Scholar. For a reformulation, see George, Alexander L., “The ‘Operational Code’: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and DecisionMaking”, International Studies Quarterly 13 (June 1969), 190–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 I am grateful to Stephen E. Hanson for drawing my attention to this definitional distinction. For discussion of different schools of thought about how to define individual “learning”, see Rathus, Spencer A., Psychology (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1984).Google Scholar

6 For an impressive study which argues that Soviet strategic prescriptions for dealing with crisis situations have changed little since Stalin and continue to mirror the strategic prescriptions discussed in Leites's work (fn. 4), see Adomeit, Hannes, Soviet Risk-Taking and Crisis Behavior (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982)Google Scholar. I discuss strategic prescriptions more fully in “Updating the Operational Code of the Politburo”, in Albert Salter, ed., Soviet Propaganda and Disinformation (forthcoming).

7 This part of the discussion, including the three previous paragraphs, is based on Zimmerman, William, Soviet Perspectives on International Relations, 1956–1967 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

8 On “bandwagoning” tendencies in world politics (which are counterposed to “balancing” tendencies), see Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: AddisonWesley, 1979)Google Scholar, and Walt, Stephen, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power”, International Security 9 (Spring 1985), 3–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See, for example, Blacker, Coit D., “The Kremlin and Detente: Soviet Conceptions, Hopes, and Expectations”, in George, Alexander, Managing US-Soviet Rivalry: Problems of Crisis-Prevention (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982), 119–38Google Scholar; Lévesque, Jacques, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution: Soviet Ideological and Strategic Perspectives, 1959–1977 (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1978), chap. 6Google Scholar; Ulam, Adam B., Dangerous Relations: The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970–1982 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 146–48Google Scholar; Albright, David E., “Vanguard Parties and Revolutionary Change in the Third World: The Soviet Perspective”, mimeo (Montgomery, Ala., Air War College, 1986).Google Scholar

10 MacFarlane's study also contains lengthy discussion of conceptions of national self-determination and national liberation in the Marxist tradition and in contemporary Third World thought.

11 The Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) is the East European equivalent of the Common Market.

12 Hough does not attempt to document the optimism of the early 1970s; nor does he dent its existence. He is more concerned with documenting the decline in optimism about Third World that has taken place among Soviet academics since Khrushchev's euphoric ex pectations were shattered.

13 The decline of optimism in party, specialist, and military literature is also ably analyzec in Albright (fn. 9); a useful update of this decline in party and specialist literature is found Valkenier, Elizabeth K., “Revolutionary Change in the Third World: Recent Soviet Reassessments”, World Politics 38 (April 1986), 415–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 On the relationship between changes in core and peripheral beliefs, see Rokeach, Milton, The Open and Closed Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1960).Google Scholar

15 The impact of political succession on Soviet foreign policy change since Stalin is explored in Breslauer, George W., “Political Succession and Soviet Foreign Policy”, paper presented at the World Congress of the Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Washington, DC, November 1985.Google Scholar

16 Pravda, February 26, 1986.

17 Global interdependence themes that emphasize the need for superpower crisis-prevention regimes can also be found in Zhurkin, V. et al., Global Problems of Mankind and the State (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985)Google Scholar, and E. Primakov, “Put' v budushchee”, Pravda, January 22, 1986, p. 4. Some implications of the acceptance in Moscow and Washington of “negativesum” images of Third World competition are discussed in George, Alexander L., “Problems of Crisis-Management and Crisis-Avoidance in U.S.-Soviet Relations”, paper presented to the Nobel Institute Symposium on War and Peace Research, Oslo, Norway, June 1985.Google Scholar

18 Sodaro, Michael, “Soviet Studies of the Western Alliance”, in Ellison, Herbert J., ed., Soviet Policy Toward Western Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1983), 234–65Google Scholar; Rozman, Gilbert, “Moscow's China-Watchers in the Post-Mao Era: The Response to a Changing China”, The China Quarterly 94 (June 1983), 215–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 On elite learning (and non-learning), see Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 217–315.Google Scholar

20 See Albright (fn. 9), passim.