Soviet Policies in Southeast Asia

Abstract

At the present time, as Soviet writing on the subject demonstrates, Southeast Asia enjoys a far greater importance in Soviet policy than ever before. The reasons for this can be attributed as much to the changing political scene in Southeast Asia the intensification of the war in Vietnam since 1964 and the threat to world peace, the Sino-Soviet dispute, the upheaval in China, and last but not least the abortive coup in Indonesia and its aftermath as to the growing Soviet desire to win friends and influence people in this area. This is not to imply that Soviet interest in Southeast Asia is necessarily recent, simply that Soviet attitudes to and relations with the area have assumed a far greater urgency in recent years. The region has never acquired the same priority and importance in Soviet policies towards the third world as have the Middle East, which because of its proximity to the U.SJS.R. plays an important role in Soviet foreign policy, and Africa. Towards the end of Khrushchev's reign interest in Southeast Asia waned considerably. But the growing split with China forced Soviet policy-makers to reappraise their attitudes. The extension of Chinese influence, particularly in such a potentially wealthy and strategically important country as Indonesia, and the gradual change in allegiance of the Indonesian Communist party the largest Communist party in the non-Communist world from Moscow to Peking posed a serious threat to Soviet interests. The danger that the whole revolutionary movement in Asia would come under Peking's hegemony was, and still is, regarded as a real one. The U.S.S.R.'s self -professed role as leader and mentor of the national liberation movement was directly threatened.