THE STRATEGY OF NON-ALIGNMENT

Western analysts are in general agreement that since the mid 1950s the Soviet Union has made strenuous attempts to capture the middle ground between the Eastern and Western alliance systems. Soviet leaders have had little interest in sustaining the intermediate position of states between the primary military structures for its own sake, but they have accepted the tactical necessity of supporting and promoting such independence as part of a broader competition with the West. Soviet officials made it abundantly clear in the 1950s and 1960s, however, that their view of international affairs is premised on an underlying struggle between two opposing and irreconcilable socio-economic systems. The emergence of a considerable number of new states which ideologically and politically were committed to neither East nor West did not shake this Soviet postulate.

The non-bloc states became an established and numerically significant component of the international order, which Soviet leaders were among the first to acknowledge. But Soviet officials have remained circumspect about their broader strategic designs for such militarily ‘uncommitted’ states. This warrants a systematic examination of how successive Soviet leaders have sought to coordinate their policies with the ‘Non-Aligned World’ and how Soviet policy-makers have employed the idea of military non-alignment as a specific strategic device in the Third World.