The Strategic Environment in East And Southeast Asia

Abstract

As the 1980s began, a new Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West, supported by China, was looming on the horizon. Although the Western powers disagreed on how to meet the Soviet challenge, there was a growing consensus on the global nature of that challenge. ? The Soviet Union is a power with global ambitions. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko has stated that no problem in the world can be resolved without Soviet parti cipation, a statement that indicates that Moscow has a rather broad conception of its own security concerns. Soviet military power has grown substantially in the past fifteen years and the Soviet Union is now perceived by many nations to be at least the equal of the United States and perhaps stronger in certain categories of military power. The Soviets have signed friendship treaties with a dozen or so countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East ? treaties which imply a considerable degree of commitment to the security of those far-flung countries. ? Soviet ambitions are still on the rise. In many regions of the world, including the Asia-Pacific region, the Soviets believe that the existing balance of power is unfavourable to them and they are determined to increase their own influence and power in those regions. ?During the past decade, the Soviets have increasingly resorted to armed force in order to spread their power and influence. Since 1975, seven pro-Soviet communist parties have seized power or territory in Africa and Asia with armed force. (The coun tries concerned are South Vietnam, Laos, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, South Yemen, and Cambodia.) Although the events leading up to communist victories in each of these cases were complex, involved a variety of indigenous forces, and certainly cannot be attributed only to Soviet manipulation, the Russians were active players in each in stance. They were not simply bystanders. Moreover, when indigenous an ti-communist forces threatened communist rule in Afghanistan in 1979, the Soviets invaded that country in order to crush the rebellion. Finally, at the time of writing (October 1981), the Soviets were threatening to invade Poland in order to crush a popular, grass-roots workers' movement that was challenging the dominant role in Poland of the Polish Communist Party. It was this disturbing pattern of Soviet behaviour that contributed to the breakdown of detente and to the emergence of a loose coalition between the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and China, a coalition that has as its major goal the containment of further Soviet expansion by military means. ? The Soviet Union has an imbalance of foreign policy resources. The attractiveness of its ideology to other parties and states is receding as the structural weaknesses of communist systems become increasingly apparent. Because the Soviet Union has only a limited trade with a few select countries, its economic influence in the world economy is