The Soviet Union And The Third World

The description for this book, Moscow's Third World Strategy, will be forthcoming.

This is a thorough and sophisticated study of one of the most critical current issues in world politics. Bruce Porter examines Soviet policy and behaviour in Third World conflicts in the postwar period, focusing particularly on five examples: the Yemeni civil war, the Nigerian civil war, the Yom Kippur war, the Angolan civil war, and the Ogaden war. Aiming to illuminate various complex tactical and operational aspects of the USSR's policy in local conflicts, the author draws on a wide and eclectic range of sources. He pays close attention to the Soviet role as arms supplier and diplomatic actor in relation to both US policy and the dynamics of the local conflict, and he concludes with a careful consideration of the effectiveness of Soviet policy and of the implications for the United States.

The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War has long been understood in a global context, but Jeremy Friedman's Shadow Cold War delves deeper into the era to examine the competition between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China for the leadership of the world revolution. When a world of newly independent states emerged from decolonization desperately poor and politically disorganized, Moscow and Beijing turned their focus to attracting these new entities, setting the stage for Sino-Soviet competition. Based on archival research from ten countries, including new materials from Russia and China, many no longer accessible to researchers, this book examines how China sought to mobilize Asia, Africa, and Latin America to seize the revolutionary mantle from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union adapted to win it back, transforming the nature of socialist revolution in the process. This groundbreaking book is the first to explore the significance of this second Cold War that China and the Soviet Union fought in the shadow of the capitalist-communist clash.

This study investigates the overall Soviet conception of non-alignment in the Third World and assesses Soviet policy in relation to this issue.