The Soviets and Southeast Asia

Abstract

It is a commonplace of Soviet authorship to say that Soviet foreign policy is indivisible, guided by certain basic principles of universal applicability, but that it naturally takes account of the specific conditions of the regions or individual countries with which it is concerned. Before attempting to examine the role which Southeast Asia plays in Soviet policy, it is therefore advisable to consider what the basic principles are, and what, in the Soviet view, the specific features of the region are.