The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-Alignment in the Third World (Hardcover, New)

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.