At first glance, it might seem that Soviet-American competition in the Third World can be readily explained by traditional IR theories.24 These tell us, after all, that major states struggle for power and advantage, that each will try to match what the other does, and that clients will be sought. Just as the European powers divided Africa and much of Asia during the period of imperialism, so the United States and the Soviet Union sought to spread their influence around the globe. But in fact the competitive logic of international politics does not lead to this conclusion. The most prominent IR theory, Waltz’s neorealism, argues that because the superpowers were so much stronger than everyone else and able to balance against the adversary by mobilizing their internal resources, they did not need to pay much attention to the Third World.25
The power of identities and the related fact that each side understood the Cold War as a clash of social systems explains much here. With Europe and China having chosen one way of life or the other, the Third World represented the uncommitted states and peoples. What was at stake was nothing less than each side’s view of the rightness of its cause, the universalism of its values, and the answer to the question of whose side history was on. Kissinger’s reaction to Salvador Allende’s election in Chile was particularly telling: "I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible."26 The idea that an educated and sophisticated country would choose a different path was deeply upsetting for reasons that go beyond standard interstate power competition.
The Soviets felt that supporting revolutionary forces was not only good international politics because it weakened the adversary, but also a revolutionary duty. The whole purpose of the Bolshevik Revolution was to lead others to the same path. One of the great surprises in Soviet archives was that the elites spoke the same way in private as they did in public. Politburo stationery bore the heading "Proletariats of the world unite!" and while this did not mean that Soviet security was to be risked to help foreign comrades, this mission was a central part of Soviet identity. Class conflict was the driver ofpolitics, and without its revolutionary mission the Soviet Union would have no convincing self-justification.
The sense of being on the right side of historical forces and the duty to help them along come out nicely in the Kennedy-Khrushchev discussions - a mild word for the exchange - at Vienna. To the president’s plea that events in the
Third World had to be managed so that they were not unduly upsetting to either side,
Mr. Khrushchev said that the West and the U. S. as its leader must recognize one fact: Communism exists and has won its right to develop The Soviet Union is for change. It believes that it is now in the political arena and it is challenging the capitalist system just as that system had challenged feudalism in the past. Mr. Khrushchev wondered whether the United States wanted to build a dam preventing the development of human mind and conscience.
To do such a thing is not in man's power. The Spanish Inquisition burned people who disagreed with it but ideas did not burn and eventually came out as victors. Thus if we start struggling against ideas, conflicts and clashes between the two countries will be inevitable. Once an idea is born it cannot be chained or burned. History should be the judge in the argument between ideas Did the President want to say that Communism should exist only in those countries that are already Communist and that if Communist ideas should develop the U. S. would be in conflict with the USSR? Such an understanding of the situation is incorrect, and if there really is such an understanding, conflicts will be inevitable. Ideas do not belong to any one nation and they cannot be retracted.27
Although Nikita Khrushchev may have enjoyed tweaking his younger and less experienced counterpart, there is no reason to doubt his sincerity, just as there is no reason to doubt that he shared the sentiment that Mikoyan expressed to him that meeting Castro made him feel young again.28
Since the Third World started out as non-Communist, if not always friendly to the United States, the main American objective was to keep it that way. Although it always hoped for the spread of democracy and American values, the primacy of blocking the Soviet Union meant that it was relatively openeyed in its support of tyrannies when this proved necessary, as it often did. As President John F. Kennedy explained in the aftermath of the assassination of Rafael Truillo in the Dominican Republic: "There are three possibilities in descending order of preference: a decent democratic regime, a continuation of the Truillo regime, or a Castro regime. We ought to aim at the first, but we really can't renounce the second until we are sure that we can avoid the
2. Communism and capitalism compete for attention on walls in Calcutta.
Third.”29 The Soviets were also willing to be pragmatic and often supported friendly Third World countries that repressed the local Communist parties, such as in Egypt. But on these occasions they had to tell themselves that these regimes, as bourgeois nationalists, were historically progressive and would eventually lead to socialism. This helps explain their continuing faith in the Third World despite the almost unbroken record of disappointment.
Of course, neither side reacted to the Third World as it actually was, but to what they perceived, and each saw events and possibilities through the lenses of their own experiences, hopes, and fears. For both sides, modernization was crucial, but in quite different ways. The United States believed that revolutions and Communism grew out of poverty and despair. If countries could be launched on the path of economic development, and if the difficult years of destabilizing transition could be weathered, then they would begin to resemble the West. Walt Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth was the clearest statement, but it was only one of a whole shelf of related volumes. The Soviet Union also placed great faith in modernization, which it was undergoing itself. The model of how it was leading its Asian populations to modernity was particularly important to it. This produced optimism, the sense that many Third World regimes were or soon would be ripe for revolution, and led to the perception that many Third World leaders had the skill and will to lead their countries to socialism at home and alignment with the USSR. If the United States suffered from exaggerated fears, the Soviet Union held exaggerated hopes. Both saw the Third World through the lenses of their understanding of their own history.
World History
