South Asia and the Indian Ocean in the 1980s: Some Trends toward Changes in International Relations

Abstract

It appears that an examination of the main causes of changes in international relations (IR) in South Asia and the Indian Ocean in the 1980s makes it possible to speak of the very important effect of global factors, primarily an extremely acute intensification of the struggle between the two world systems and the worsening of relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, generated by the confrontationist and militarist foreign policy of the current U.S. administration. The consequences-the serious deterioration of detente, the unheard of increase in the arms race, particularly nuclear weapons, and the deliberate disruption of the negotiation process, etc.-are common knowledge. All this, emphasized the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, K. U. Chernenko, in his response to the appeal of the Socialist International leaders, is a result of a known policy aimed at disrupting the existing equilibrium and attaining military superiority over the Soviet Union.''1 The important elements in this destructive process are, to use the U.S. government's official terminology, the direct or rigid confrontation with the Soviet Union at the global and regional levels, the possibility of winning a nuclear war against the Soviet Union, and the emphasis on military might to secure vital zones for the U.S. and its allies in the developing world-i.e., various militarist solutions to undesirable problems in different parts of the developing world. In the definition of principal objectives of global policy at the governmental level appeared a